Lost and Found
by GrandiloquentHeartlessness
Summary: After Jude's tour is over, Tommy and Jude's perfect happy ending isn't turning out to be so perfect after all. The sequel to Happy Birthday. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **ohai! This is the sequel to Happy Birthday, which is a story I posted a little less than a year ago, and you really do need to read that in order to understand what goes on in this story, including like entire characters and stuff.

Like I always do, I have all of the story written, so there will be no going on hiatus and never finishing or anything like that. I will update on Fridays. (Today is Tuesday but whatever shhh)

This story is less than half the length of the first one. (Happy Birthday had about 54,000 words, and this has about 25,000.) It has 12 chapters (and possibly an epilogue if I ever write one.)

I sincerely hope you enjoy :)

* * *

The woman was tall, blonde, and perfect. She laughed and touched Tommy's arm, tossing her long hair. Jude rolled her eyes as she watched the woman do what looked like the whole "wow, you must work out!" thing, squeezing Tommy's bicep. God, this girl was laying it on _really _thick. Tommy, though, was eating it up. _Of course._ Jude thought. She wasn't the jealous type, but then again, Tommy wasn't exactly the faithful type.

Jude looked down at the untouched drink in her hand and her stomach turned. Oh God. She needed to talk to him. Now, before she lost her nerve. She couldn't put it off anymore. She put down the glass and walked up to the two of them. "Hey, Tommy, can we talk for a minute, please?" she said, crossing her arms and interrupting whatever the woman was saying about her modeling career.

Tommy looked down at her and frowned. "Jude, seriously? I'm talking to someone."

Jude raised her eyebrows. "I can see that." She turned to the taller woman in front of her and reached out a hand, smiling too sweetly. "Jude Harrison."

The woman shook her hand, and her smile turned into a look of uncomfortable recognition. Tommy and Jude's relationship wasn't exactly a secret– the rumors had already been circulating for months when Jude and Tommy blew them wide open by kissing on stage at a concert in New York City, and it had been over three months since then– and the woman put it together quickly enough. "Oh. You're his–"

"Girlfriend?" Jude finished. "Why, yes, yes I am. And you are...?"

"A _friend_." Tommy said, frowning.

"Katya" The woman smiled uncomfortably, looking embarrassed. _As she should_. Jude thought.

"And a model, I'm guessing?" Jude said brightly to the woman, gesturing to her long legs and high, high heels.

"Yes." Her voice had a hint of an Eastern European accent. "Mainly I do the runway, but sometimes also magazines."

"That's nice." Jude continued in a syrupy-sweet voice. She smiled at Tommy. "Tommy has had a lot of friends who are models, haven't you, Tom?"

"Don't start, Jude." He hissed at her, and then looked back at his 'friend'. "Sorry, you were saying something?"

Jude sighed. "I do need to talk to you, Tom. Please."

"Can it wait?"

Jude frowned and crossed her arms again. "Now."

"Really, Jude?" He asked, irritated.

"_Now._"

Tommy made a show of rolling his eyes to the model, saying "Of course, your highness. Whatever you say."

A surge of anger went through Jude at that, and she snapped "He'll see you around" and grabbed Tommy's hand, pulling him slightly, and turning and walking through the party to an exit door. She stepped outside into the alley. He followed her and stood with his arms crossed over his chest. "What the hell was that?" Tommy asked, exasperated.

"_You're _asking _me_?"

"You just pulled the–"

"That 'your highness' comment was completely–" Jude said, talking over him.

"jealous girlfriend card on me. Accusing me of–"

"out of line!"

"I did nothing wrong!"

"Out. Of. Line."

"So I can't talk to people anymore?"

"Of course you can _talk to people,_ Tommy, I–"

He spoke over her. "Just not women then? Not models? Tell me the rules so I can keep them straight. Who am I allowed to have a conversation with?"

"wasn't saying you couldn't talk to– Okay, first of all, you were not _having a conversation_ with her. You were _flirting _with her."

"Oh, here we go." Tommy said, rolling his eyes.

"That's not what this is even about, I just need to–"

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Tommy, don't."

"Follow you around all night? Hold your bag?"

"Tommy, stop it!"

"Do you want me to stay by your side all night and stare into your eyes?"

"Shut up!" Jude screamed.

"If you wanted a puppy dog, you should've just married the one you were dragging around before." It was a topic they usually avoided, and he wielded it like a weapon, venom in his voice. He regretted it instantly when he saw her face, startled and angry, like he'd just slapped her. He sighed "I didn't mean that."

"Yeah, you did." She said quietly. He groaned, and she gave him a look that could have frozen hell. "I don't _care_ if you talk to other women, Tommy. We live together, and we work together, we just got back from a tour together... I get it, that's a lot of time. Believe me, I don't want to spend every waking moment with you, either. I usually don't even care when you flirt with models, or waitresses, or flight attendants, or reporters, or random women on the street. If it really bothered me, I couldn't be with you. I get that that's what you do, and I know that it doesn't mean anything, and you should know me well enough to know that that's not _me_, I'm not that overly-jealous, possessive girlfriend. But I just... I needed to talk to you."

"And it couldn't have waited? It had to be right then?"

"I just didn't want to–"

"You're telling me it wasn't about who I was talking to at all?"

"I didn't say that." She snapped.

"What was so important it couldn't wait, hm?" he said, crossing his arms.

She wanted to blurt it out, to see his face when she did. She wanted to use it to hurt him, to shut him up, wipe that smug smirk off of his face. But... that wouldn't be right. This wasn't the kind of thing you used as a weapon in a fight. "You're right." She said quietly. "It's not important. I'm going home."

He sighed and uncrossed his arms. "Jude, you don't have to go."

"I wouldn't want to cramp your style."

"I didn't _say_ that you were–"

"Save it, Tommy." She hissed. "I'll see you later."

He made a noise of exasperation. "Fine."

"Fine." She pushed back through the door ahead of him, walking quickly through the party and out to call a car. She managed to fight the tears back until she was safely back inside her apartment.

.

A little over an hour later, Jude felt Tommy come up behind her and lay down next to her in bed, putting an arm over her. She tensed for a moment.

"I'm sorry." He murmured into her hair, and she sighed and relaxed into him, her back against his chest, pulling his arm tighter around her waist.

She nodded. "Me too."

"What I said was uncalled for."

"I overreacted. I should've just waited to talk to you after we left." Her voice was tight and quiet.

"Are you crying?" He asked, propping himself up on his elbow to get a better look at her. She curled away from him. "Jude, look at me. Please?" She pulled away and sat up with her back turned, legs dangling over the edge of the bed, her head in her hands. Tommy got up and walked around the bed, kneeling on the floor in front of her, and putting a hand on her cheek, which was indeed wet with tears. He looked dismayed. "Oh, Jude."

"It's nothing." Jude muttered, wiping her eyes. "It's fine."

"I'm awful." Tommy whispered.

"You're not."

"I am a goddamn awful person."

"No, Tommy. You're really not."

"What kind of guy is such an ass that he makes his girlfriend cry like this?"

"It's not that. It's not you. It's nothing, I'm alright."

"What's wrong, then?" She shook her head. "Come on. Tell me." Tommy pleaded. "You've been acting weird all day. I just thought you were still feeling sick or something, but this is my fault, isn't it? I screwed something up."

"No." Jude insisted. "You didn't."

"Then what?"

"Okay." Jude took a deep breath. "Do you... Do you remember that night in Buenos Aires, on tour?"

Tommy snorted a laugh. "Vaguely." Then he looked confused. "Is that what this is about? What happened?"

Her words came out in a rush "I said the next morning that I wasn't sure what had happened because we were both so completely smashed, and I wasn't sure if the condom had broken, and I'd run out of pills a week before and hadn't been able to get any so I missed like five days..."

"Wait, what? Jude, what are you saying?"

"Tommy, I'm pregnant."

Tommy just stared at her, stunned. "You're what? You're... wow." He sank back onto the floor, paling. "Buenos Aires, you said? That was what? Six weeks ago?"

"Almost seven."

"Are you sure? I mean are you sure that you're really... you know."

Jude nodded. "I took three different pregnancy tests."

"Okay, okay, alright." Tommy said. "So you're pregnant. How– how do you... I mean, what do you want to do about it?"

"Tommy, it's a baby, it's not... You can't just..."

"I know, I know, that's not how I meant it. I just mean... Do you want kids, Jude? We've never talked about it before."

"I don't know." She looked panicked. "I don't know, I don't know. Do you?"

"I... guess I never really pictured myself... I've never really thought about it."

"Me neither. Maybe some day, but my career..."

"Does anyone know about this? Does Sadie know?"

Jude shook her head. "She's in China, with Darius. I didn't want to bother her. I told Emily I thought I might be, but she's the only one."

"But the media?"

"There's no way they could know. _I _didn't even know for sure until this morning, and Em is the one who got me the tests."

"Okay, so if it's been seven weeks we still have time."

"Time for what?"

"To... decide. Before anyone finds out."

"To decide." Jude repeated slowly.

"We'll get through this, alright?" He got up and sat next to her, hugging her to him and stroking her back. She started crying again. "Don't cry, Jude. Shhh, hey. It's okay. I love you. That's what matters."

Jude sat up and looked at him. "I'm a mess."

He kissed her softly, her tears making his face wet. "No. You're perfect." He sat there holding her until long after she'd stopped crying.

After a couple minutes, she straightened up and looked at him, her cheeks dry. She ran her fingers through the hair at his temples and said "I love you. No matter what." She looked exhausted.

Tommy kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry I'm such an idiot. Can we just sleep on it? We'll talk about it tomorrow, okay? Or whenever you're ready."

Jude nodded, and they climbed into bed, curling up together in the dark.

* * *

**A/N:** Woohoo first chapter yeah!

As always, please review if you have something you'd like to say, and I'll be back on Friday with the next chapter :)

(P.S. Do you like my totally and completely original plotline that no one has ever used before ever?)

(P.P.S. In all seriousness, it gets more original in the next chapter.)


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Chapter two yes. Thank you to those of you who reviewed!

To the reviewer who asked me about what I meant by "not exactly the faithful type", it's just a reference to the type of boyfriend/husband Tommy has been in the past (in the show, not my story.) Not that he's ever cheated on Jude, but he cheated on Portia and possibly also on Sadie, and then presumably on a lot of women before that. Tommy is, and always will be, a ladies' man to a certain extent. He flirts, he has a history of sleeping around, etc. That's a well-established character trait of Tommy, and that's all that meant. It wasn't foreshadowing or anything :)

* * *

The next evening, Tommy and Jude drove home from the studio in increasingly tense silence. Neither of them had mentioned anything about the pregnancy all day, but it was a clear elephant in the room. When they walked into the apartment, Jude wanted to head straight for her music room and lock the door, but Tom caught her wrist, saying gently "Hey. Can we talk about this please?"

Jude sighed, turning back around to face him. "Fine."

"Jude, if you need more time–"

"It's fine." She said.

"So..." Tommy said. "What do you want to do?"

"You first."

Tommy shook his head. "You first."

"On three." She rolled her eyes and counted down, though she felt silly.

"I think we should keep it." Tommy said, at the same time Jude said "I can't have a baby right now."

Tommy's face fell, and they both stood in surprised silence. "You... want a kid?" Jude asked quietly after a long moment.

"You don't?"

Jude sighed in response and looked down at her feet. Tommy said "Okay, look. All day, all I could think about was you." Jude looked up, surprised. His look was tender, pleading. "I know we've been all kinds of unstable in the past, and I know the timing isn't ideal, but I love you, Jude. I want all of you with me forever."

"Oh, Tommy, I..." She said softly.

"And when I think about having a baby with you, I can't think of anything I want more. Think about it." Jude was shaking her head, but Tommy continued "A perfect little blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby girl. And she'd be all ours, Jude. Holding her in my arms, teaching her to play piano–"

"Stop!" Jude said, more forcefully then she'd meant to. Tommy cut off, looking hurt. She continued, putting a hand on his shoulder, gently. "I love you too. So, so much, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but that's not what this is. You make having a baby sound like some fairytale, but it wouldn't be! It wouldn't be joy and love and rainbows, it would be constant screaming, and changing diapers, and waking up at two in the morning..." She became increasingly agitated as she spoke, knotting her hands in her hair in frustration. "We couldn't work, Tommy! How could I go in to record or shoot a music video if there's a kid needing to be fed, and changed, and–"

"We could get a nanny!" Tommy protested.

"Okay, a nanny for, what, eight hours a day? Ten? That still means no more industry parties, no more late nights. How can I write if there's a baby screaming? How can I tour with a child? My career would be over!"

"Your career isn't everything!" He shouted, exasperated.

Jude stared at him for a second, mouth open slightly. "Fine, then." She said quietly. "What about yours?"

"_My_ career?" Tommy scoffed. "What career? I'm just your wing man, Jude. I haven't had a career of my own for years. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love working with you, but it's not..."

"That's not what I meant." She said, shaking her head. "I heard the album, Tommy."

"What?"

"I heard it. Your album. The tracks you recorded. You didn't think I knew about it, but I found them."

"That..." Tommy sighed "is not an album. It's just some half-assed songs."

"No way. The recordings are rough, sure, but your music is so good, Tom. You're so talented. _So _talented. I didn't say anything before because I didn't want to push you, but you need to share that music with the world. It's what you've always dreamed of, remember?"

"It could still happen." he insisted. "Some day. Having a baby wouldn't be the end of our lives. We can put our careers on hold for a year, maybe two, and then I can think about releasing an album, or you can go on another tour. You can still be a rock star, you'll just be a rock star and a mom."

Jude was shaking her head vigorously. "No. _No_. I'm barely 21! I'm too fucking _young_ for this!"

"I'm not!" He protested. "I'm 28, Jude.

She groaned "So we're back to this, then? Back to the age difference?"

"I've spent my whole life being stupid and shallow and famous, and running away from what I wanted, but now I've finally found it, found you, and I'm not running! For God's sake Jude, this isn't just your decision! You can't– This is my baby too!"

"But it's _my_ body!" She shouted.

"You're worried about your _figure?!" _Tommy asked, incredulous.

"No! That's not what I meant!" She sighed exasperatedly and tried another angle, saying a little more calmly, "You honestly think we're ready for kids Tommy? All of that responsibility? All of that commitment? Really? _You_?"

"What, so you don't think I'd be a good dad?!" He was getting more and more upset.

"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I don't know if I want to have to find that out right now."

"You don't trust me to take care of a baby!" Tommy accused, looking hurt and angry. He took a step towards her. "This isn't about your career, this is about me! You think I'll end up as some sort of deadbeat dad, that I can't handle the responsibility? What? Because of my past?"

"No! It is about my career, I also just... Of course I trust you."

"Then what?"

She was tentative to brooch the subject for fear of how he'd react, but the thought wouldn't leave her. "Okay, well, you and I both know that your mom wasn't exactly–"

"I am _nothing _like my mother!" Tommy roared.

"I'm not saying you're like her, I'm just saying–"

"Don't EVER compare me to my mother!" Tommy grabbed Jude hard by the shoulders. His fingers dug painfully into her upper arms, his face, furious, was terrifying above hers. "Do you hear me?! I am NOT her!"

"Tommy" Jude whimpered. "Tommy that hurts."

Immediately, the anger disappeared from his expression and he released her. She staggered back, clutching her arms. "Jude..." Tommy said quietly, reaching out to her. She flinched away and pain shot through Tommy's expression as he pulled back his hand. "I didn't mean to..." He whispered, his voice getting quieter and quieter as he spoke. "I'm so sorry, Jude, I am so so sorry."

Jude recovered as the pain in her arms abated and looked up at Tommy. He was standing frozen with his hand stretched out a little ways toward her, his expression heartbroken, eyes pleading into hers. They'd had a lot of awful fights, but he'd never once come close to hurting her physically (the time she'd hurt her hand punching him notwithstanding) and she didn't know how to react. All she felt was confusion. "Ow!" was the only word that came to her lips, a surprised breath.

Tommy seemed to crumple in on himself, and backed away from her. "I'm sorry." He whispered again.

"It's okay." Jude sighed, relaxing as the pain and the surprise faded.

"No it isn't."

"Yes, it is." She insisted, becoming more sure, moving towards him. It was he who flinched away this time, and her heart sank. "Don't overreact, Tommy, come on."

"I _hurt you_." He whispered. "All I ever do is _hurt you._"

Jude was familiar with this self-hate spiral of his. "Tommy, no. It's not a big deal. You didn't mean to hurt me. It's not like you hit me or anything, you just..."

"I got angry, and I hurt you. There's no excuse for that. How could I ever think that you'd want to have a baby with me when I'm–" He was shaking his head faster and faster. "You deserve better, Jude. You deserve better than this."

She started to panic as he put a hand on the doorknob. "That's a lie and you know it." She rushed forward and turned him towards her, putting her hand up to pull his face down to hers. "Tommy, please."

He relaxed his grip on the doorknob, putting a hand on her cheek, sliding his fingers through her hair. She tried to kiss him, but just as their lips met he pulled back. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean..." he whispered.

"Tommy, it's fine."

"It's not fine. I won't hurt you anymore." He turned to the door again.

"_This_ is hurting me Tommy! If you leave me it will hurt me!"

"I'm not leaving you, I'll just give you some time, okay? Some space."

"I don't want space! I want you!" She pleaded, grabbing onto the back of his shirt.

"No you don't." He turned back to her, and she took his hands, clutching them tightly. "I have to go, Jude. I can't stay, I..." He trailed off.

Something snapped in her then, at the pain in her arms and the shame on his face, at the familiarity of the scene. She dropped his hands, her expression hardening as rage filled her. "How dare you?!" she shouted. "How dare you do this to me again? What happened to 'I'm not running'? How can you be so... so... _weak_?! Every single time, you run away the second it gets hard!"

He flinched at the word 'weak.' "I know."

"You can't do this to me! Not now!" It wasn't about the bruises she felt forming on her arms, or about his mom, or even about the pregnancy. It was about every time he'd walked out on her, every time he'd run away from their relationship, every single damn time he'd left her crying.

"Jude, I'm not... We're... You need–"

"You don't get to tell me what I fucking need!" She shouted. "If you walk out that door, I swear to god, Tommy, we're... we're..." The ultimatum died in her throat, which was closing with tears. "Don't you _dare_." She whispered.

"This is best, Jude. I'll call, alright?" He said, and turned the knob, walking quickly through the doorway and down the hall.

"Don't bother!" Jude screamed after him. Tommy flinched as she slammed the door behind him, but kept walking, fighting back tears, his mind swirling with guilt and pain and regret.

Inside the apartment that only recently had begun to really feel like their home, Jude screamed, kicking over a chair and scattering mail from the counter in a sudden burst of violence that did very little to make her feel better, before dissolving into tears again on the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **To the reviewer (atthtt) who asked for posts twice a week, I did that with Happy Birthday, but it was twice as long. I guess I just don't want all of this to be over too soon :)

* * *

Jude pressed the talk button on her phone, dialing his number for what felt like the hundredth time that day. She'd woken up alone that morning, after crying herself to sleep curled up in sheets that smelled like him. She had forced herself to get ready and drag herself to work, wishing harder than she cared to admit for Tommy to be sitting at the sound booth when she arrived with coffee and that smile he reserved just for her. But an empty studio was all that was waiting for her when she got there.

She'd tried to wait before calling him, to give him time to recover, and to call her as he'd said he would, but she'd broken down around lunchtime and called him for the first time. His phone had been off all day. She was almost ready to leave work now, and it had been three hours since the last time she'd called, so she let herself hope that he'd finally–

"You've reached Tom Quincy's voicemail. Leave a message."

"Tommy, please." She said after the beep, the desperation coming out in her voice. "We just need to talk about this. Just come back. We can fix this. It's not a big deal. You just have to come home, and then we can work it out, okay? Please. I love you. Call me." She hung up the phone and slid down the studio wall to the floor, cursing and putting her head in her hands. It may have been partly hormones, but suddenly the tears were back, coming faster than she could fight them. In an effort to stop the flood, she reached for her guitar and began to play. But what came from her hands was "I Still Love You," and that only made it worse. After a few moments of tears falling softly onto her guitar, she put the instrument to the side and pulled her knees to her chest, sobbing in earnest now.

"Jude?" Her heart leapt at the male voice, half-expecting Tommy for a split second, before her brain caught up to her hearing and she realized that the man had an English accent. She looked up and saw Alexander, of all people, standing in the doorway. "Alex?" She asked, shocked, hastily wiping tears from her cheeks. She hadn't seen her ex-fiancé since she'd left his apartment four months ago on they day they'd broken up.

"This situation is uncomfortably familiar." He said dryly, referring to the night he'd first asked her out. "Sitting in a dark studio, playing guitar." He was in front of her now, looking down at her. He raised his eyebrows. "Crying." His tone wasn't mean or angry, but it was far from tender.

"What are you doing here?"

"I've been coming here since I was 12. You don't own the place." He snapped.

"I didn't mean it like that, Alex, and you know it." Jude said tiredly. "I just meant I haven't seen you around since..."

"I know." His tone softened and he sighed and sat down next to her with his back against the wall, making sure to leave a few feet in between them. "I came 'round a few times while you were gone on tour, but I didn't want to... Just with you and... you know."

"I'm sorry." She whispered.

He ignored her apology. "I came to return some CDs to Danny. I heard the song and thought for a second that I'd gone back in time." He gave her a crooked smile and she laughed a little. "Not quite, unfortunately." He sighed, then muttered, frowning. "I could've saved myself a lot of pain if I had. Just gone up to my past self and said 'don't do it, mate. She's in love with someone else.'"

"Alex I'm–"

"It's alright." He said. "Don't apologize. I always knew I was a rebound, I just didn't know how hard you were rebounding."

She nodded and bit her lip. "How are you?"

He thought for a minute and then said "Better than I was. I'm alright. Pretty good, actually."

She nodded. "Are you... seeing anyone?"

"No." He answered with a frown.

"Oh. I just thought maybe... you and Maren..."

He shook his head. "I can't do that to her. Maren is too good a friend to be my rebound. There was one night a few weeks after... But I knew I wasn't over you, and I told her I couldn't do it. She understood and she agreed that she needed some time to figure some things out too. She's in India now, for a few months, doing volunteer work at a primary school. When she gets back..." He looked at Jude and then shook his head again. "We'll see."

"I think she'd be good for you. Better than I ever was."

"I don't know about that." He said. They sat in silence for a long moment before Alex said "You and Quincy are together." It wasn't a question. He'd seen more of their relationship than he'd have liked in the media.

"Yes." She whispered, tears threatening again at the mention of Tommy.

"Are you happy?" He asked quietly.

She tried to say "yes" but a sob chose that moment to force its way from her throat, the tears spilling out over her eyelids again.

"Obviously everything is brilliant." Alex muttered sarcastically, but he sighed and looked concerned, his previous façade of uncaring coolness slipping. "What's wrong, Jude? Did he do something?"

She shook her head. "Not exactly."

"Then what? What's wrong?" She shook her head and he said "Jude, really. Why are you crying?"

"I'm pregnant." She whispered.

"What?" Alex asked, shocked. "You're... what?" He paused a moment, then asked, carefully. "How long?"

"Seven weeks."

"So it's..."

"It's Tommy's."

"God." He looked sick. "But isn't that... Good news?" Jude sobbed again in response. "Wow. I knew you weren't sure you wanted kids, but this is a little extreme."

She tried to stop crying, for Alex's sake. Because it wasn't fair to break down in front of him, not after what she'd done, but the tears kept coming.

Alex was at a loss as to what to do. He hated seeing her cry, but he also hated that he still cared so damn much about her, after everything she'd done to him. He sat fighting this war with himself, until finally he couldn't take her sobbing anymore, and the part of him that wanted to do something, anything to make her feel better won out over the part that wanted to run far away from her and the pain he knew she'd cause him. "It's okay, Jude, it's okay. Come here." He said, dropping the uncaring act altogether, putting his arms around her. He hated himself for how good she smelled, how much he'd missed holding her.

Jude cried into his shoulder for a minute before pulling away and wiping her tears. "What are you doing?" She asked. "Why are you being so nice to me? You should hate me."

"I do hate you." he said, only half-joking. "But I hate seeing you cry even more."

"You're too nice." She sniffled.

He didn't ask what he wanted to ask, which was 'is that why you left me for a man who makes you cry?' and instead said "I still don't get it, though. Why is it so bad that you're... you know. Don't you... I thought you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him. You love him, right?" The words were awkward in his mouth.

Jude looked desperately at him "It's not that simple. My... my career, and Tommy's... I just don't know if...I don't know."

"I understand that part, it's a big change, but is it really bad enough that it makes you _this_ upset?"

She shook her head. "We... had a fight." She admitted quietly, reaching up instinctively to her arms where the faint bruises were already fading to yellow.

"He hurt you?" Alex asked, anger flashing through his expression.

"No, of course not. He would never." Jude half-lied. "He just... It's not a big deal." Alex gave her a skeptical look and she squeezed her eyes shut. "He left, and I can't reach him."

"He stormed out?"

"Not exactly. He just... when something happens, and things get complicated, he runs away." She started to cry again at the last part. "It's happened every time. But when I left, and he followed me, I just thought..." She realized suddenly who she was talking to, and stopped. "We shouldn't be having this conversation. I'm so sorry, Alex. This isn't fair to you. These are my problems. Not yours."

"One's exes aren't generally sources of advice on one's new relationship, no." Alex said dryly.

"God, I'm such an idiot." Jude groaned, putting her head in her hands again "I mess everything up."

Alex put a hand out to stroke her hair without thinking, but pulled it back. "No, you don't." He said quietly.

"I messed us up." She whispered.

"We were already a mess to begin with. Even if he hadn't come here we'd still have been a mess."

"I was a mess." Jude corrected. "There's nothing wrong with you."

"You weren't a mess." Alex said, and then laughed a little. "Right now, this is you being a mess. You know what? Come on."

"Come on where?" She lifted her head to look at him, surprised.

"Go, clean yourself up, and we're going out for drinks. Nora can live with it."

"Alex..."

"Oh, right, you can't drink. Well, then we'll go out and eat disgusting greasy food. Or, you know what, I'll do you one better. Let me cook you dinner."

"I can't, Alex."

"As friends, Jude. Promise." She gave him a skeptical look, and he frowned. "Do you really have so little faith in me?"

"I've hurt you enough."

"Exactly." He said. "You hurt me, and it was awful, but then I got through it, and now I'd like to be your friend. I'm not taking no for an answer."

Jude still looked hesitant, but his smile made her feel better, somehow, let her forget about Tommy a little bit, and she finally nodded. "Alright" She conceded, and smiled a little.

"There she is." He said, a grin spreading across his face.

"Here she is." Jude repeated, feeling her mood brighten a little at the sight of his smile. She wiped the last of the tears from her face and smiled in spite of herself.

* * *

**A/N: **Man, I like Alex, but I DO NOT like Alex+Jude. Tsk tsk.

Your reviews and your readership are much appreciated! You brighten my days :)


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **Haaayyy. I have been stricken down by a horrible influenza, but I have dragged myself up from the depths of my den of sickness to provide you with this chapter.

* * *

In the back of his mind, Alex fancied himself playing the role Tommy had played when he'd ruined Alex and Jude's engagement. He semi-consciously tried to put himself in the place of the man who had slowly but surely stolen Jude from him. He wouldn't have really tried anything, of course, though he certainly didn't doubt that Tommy had, but somewhere in his thoughts was the vision of Jude slowly realizing that Tommy was all wrong for her and falling for Alex again. He wasn't trying to steal her, but he'd have been lying if he said he wasn't letting himself hope that he might get her back.

"Where are we going?" Jude asked as he drove.

"To my flat." he said, glancing over at her, confused. "I didn't figure you'd want to go to yours, what with–"

"Right." Jude interrupted quickly. "But this isn't the way to your place."

"Oh, right. That. My sister and her boyfriend got engaged and they moved in together. Hers is nicer, so he moved in there, and I bought his."

"What? When did that happen?" She asked.

"Ashleigh and Derek got engaged... let's see... I think mum told me about it the day before you and I... you know. So after everything happened, and Derek said he was thinking of moving out, I asked if I could take it. I needed a change of scenery, I guess. It helped."

"Good. " Jude said. "I'm glad."

.

"So what would you like?" Alex asked as he breezed easily into his new flat, going straight to the kitchen. "Quelque chose français, peut-être? Ash was going to come over for dinner last night and then she cancelled, so I should have the ingredients for boeuf bourguignon. I know you used to like it. I probably have some bread, too. Ah, yep. There it is." He turned and smiled at her. "Sound good?"

Jude nodded and said "Sure, sounds great." But at the mention of French, her mind had gone elsewhere.

France had been in the early part of her tour, before North America and kissing on stage in New York. She had, at that point, confirmed in the media that she and Alex were no longer together, but her relationship with Tommy was still just a rumor. They had given everyone a day off in Paris, and Tommy had taken her around the city.

Though in public they had to remain strictly hands-off for the sake of keeping their relationship secret, Tommy had kept finding excuses to brush up against her, to hold her hand, to whisper deliciously inappropriate things when no one was looking, his lips brushing against her ear and making her shiver. He would pull her into one of Paris's many impossibly thin alleyways, around corners, into closets, and they'd exchange stolen, burning kisses that left her breathless, heart pounding with the thrill of the secrecy. They had gotten carried away once, in what had turned out to be a custodial closet of a museum, and had been caught by the janitor. Jude had hastily fixed her clothes as Tommy apologized profusely to the grey-haired man in French she couldn't understand. When they were safely away, Tommy had muttered "Oops," at which they'd both dissolved into laughter.

That night he'd kissed her somewhere on the endless stairs of the Eiffel Tower as the lights of the hour flickered around them. To anyone passing by on the stairs they were just another couple in the self-proclaimed city of love. "Je suis perdu, vois-tu." He whispered.

"What?" She asked, and he smiled, still holding her.

"it's from a poem by Alfred de Musset. Je suis perdu, vois-tu" he recited. "je suis noyé, inondé d'amour; je ne sais plus si je vis, si je mange, si je respire, si je parle; je ne sais que je t'aime."

"What is this? Tommy Q reciting poetry?" Jude had teased.

"I've gone soft." He joked. "You've ruined me."

She laughed. "What does it mean? The poem?"

He kissed her forehead softly, then her cheek. His lips brushed her ear as he murmured the words "I am lost, you see. I am drowned, flooded with love; I no longer know if I live, if I eat, if I breathe, if I speak; I know only that I love you." he pulled back and looked into her eyes for a long moment before laughing quietly. "Very French."

"How are you so perfect?" Jude had breathed in real astonishment.

He'd brushed it off, kissing her lightly and saying "The most beautiful city in the world with the most beautiful woman in the world? It's not me that's perfect."

As they'd stood there looking out at the lights of the city below them and drinking overpriced champagne, it was the most sure Jude had ever been that she would love Tommy for the rest of her life.

.

"Jude? Hellooo?" Alexander was saying as Jude stared off into space. "Are you there?" He laughed and waved a hand in front of her face.

Jude was pulled back into reality, feeling hollow. "Yeah, sorry. Just... thinking."

"You alright?"

Jude took a deep breath, trying to ignore the ache in her chest, then smiled and said. "I'm fine."

Her smile was wobbly, and Alex looked skeptical. "You're not going to start crying again, are you?"

"Not unless you make me chop onions." She joked, feebly.

He smiled. "Those tears I can handle."

"Hand me a knife then."

He got a knife, a cutting board, and an onion, and passed them to her on the counter. "You're sure you're okay?" He asked.

She nodded. "I was just remembering something. Something from tour."

"Oh, yeah, how was your tour, by the way?" He asked as she began to chop the onion, and he was cutting beef into cubes.

"It was perfect." She said quietly, her voice tight, tears forming in her eyes from more than the onion. She cleared her throat and looked up at him. "But I'm sure it would be boring to hear about. What's been going on with you?"

Alexander looked for a second like he was going to protest, but he didn't, and instead told her about how he'd gotten an internship at some big shot company, and that it was going well, and about how his sister's wedding was going to be in June, and "Maybe you can come?"

"I'm sure your mother would _love_ that." Jude said sarcastically. His mother had hated her even before the engagement had fallen apart (_before you broke his heart_, a voice in her head corrected) and Jude couldn't imagine how much the woman must hate her now.

He grimaced. "You're not exactly her favorite person in the world right now, no."

"Yeah, and I can't imagine Ashleigh disagrees. She probably hates me too." She said dryly.

Alex sighed. "Okay, okay, I'll admit, she's not your biggest fan." He smiled at her. "But I am. I've forgiven you, and that's what counts, right?" Jude could only think _you shouldn't have_, but Alex continued, talking about school and work, seeming to sense that what she needed wasn't someone to listen. She needed someone to distract her, to fill the silence, and Alex did that.

The longer he talked and the more they joked about her failure to chop vegetables properly, the better she felt. Alex was a great cook, something she'd definitely missed since they'd split up, and the meal was great. Slowly, she stopped obsessively checking her phone, stopped worrying every five seconds about where Tommy was, about the baby, about everything. She remembered why she'd started spending time with Alex in the first place. When she'd first moved to London he'd been the only thing that could take her mind off missing Tommy.

After they finished eating, and Jude had helped Alex wash dishes, he asked "Would you like me to take you home?"

The thought of spending another night alone in the bed she was supposed to share with Tommy made her feel sick, but she said "You probably should."

"Jude, you know you don't have to. You can stay." He offered carefully, seeing her reluctance to leave. Then, when her eyebrows shot up, he hastened to add "I mean, I have a futon and a spare room, if you want to stay here, just for tonight. I could make you breakfast and drive you to work in the morning."

She shook her head. "I can't."

"Sure you can." He insisted. "It's not an imposition, I promise. I'd be more than happy to have you." He reached out to touch her arm.

She pulled away. "Alex," she said firmly. "I can't."

His face fell, though he hid it quickly. "Right. Of course. Sorry. I didn't mean to imply..."

"It's fine, I get it. I just don't think that would be... right. I can't. Sorry."

He nodded. "Of course. I'll just take you home then."

"Thanks, Alex." Jude said. "Thanks for dinner. Thanks for everything."

"Well anything's better than sitting alone, I figure."

Jude nodded and checked her phone. Nothing. Her heart clenched again, but she fought the feeling back and said "Alright, let's go."

.

When they got to her building Alex said "We should have lunch, sometime."

"Sure." Jude shrugged.

"Tomorrow?" He suggested, and despite the carefully casual tone with which he said it, Jude sensed the eagerness behind the question.

Guilt immediately washed through her. She shouldn't be doing this. Shouldn't have come with him in the first place, shouldn't have let him hold her while she cried into his shirt. She should apologize right now, and not see him any more. And yet... well, she hadn't done anything to lead him on, had she? And she... she... _needed him_. Needed someone to hold her together, needed a friend. When she was with Alex, she felt better, lighter. As long as she continued to make it clear that what she felt was nothing more than friendship... what could it hurt? _Him. _a voice said in her head. _It could hurt him._ But she pushed the thought away. "Um... Maybe. I have to see. When Tommy comes back, he and I really need to talk, so I don't know..."

"Of course." He said. "Right." He paused. "But if he doesn't..."

Her heart seized up at that. "He will." she insisted, looking a little panicked.

"Of course. Of course he will. I just mean, if he doesn't by 12:30 tomorrow...?"

"He will." She said firmly. "But if not, then we can have lunch." If not, she knew, then there's a very good chance she would be falling apart, and she'd need Alex to keep her sane.

He smiled. "Great. See you then."

She nodded. "Maybe."

"I really hope it all works out, Jude." He said, more than anything to crush the part of him that was selfishly hoping Tommy would stay away forever.

"Thanks. It was good to see you again." She opened the car door.

"Goodnight." He said, imagining reaching out to kiss her goodnight, the way her lips would feel on his, her fingers in his hair... _Bloody hell. _He thought, mentally kicking himself out of the fantasy before it could go any further. _I am such an idiot. _Why would he do this to himself? He was just going to end up getting hurt. But... oh God, it was Jude, had always been Jude, from the very first moment she'd ever smiled at him, and he was powerless against it.

"Alex..." She said carefully, sensing that something was off in the way he said goodnight. "I don't want to hurt you. If this is too much..."

"No" He said quickly, as though the idea was plainly ridiculous. "Of course not. It's fine. I'm over it. Over us. It's you and Tommy. I understand. It's fine, Jude"

"If you're sure..."

"More than sure."

"Alright, then. Goodnight, Alex." She said with a smile and a little wave.

"Goodnight." He said pleasantly.

As he watched her walk away, he couldn't help but feel like he'd rather have his heart broken by her than be loved by anyone else.

* * *

**A/N: **See, there is a little fluff in this story after all.

I love to read your reviews, so if you'd got something to say/ask/suggest, please do so!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to coughing up my lungs.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Ohai! Sorry I missed an update. My life is crazy. I was out of town and then in the hospital and stuff, but I'm alright now! (relatively)

The nice message I got asking about why I didn't post was appreciated, and the message I got that was yelling at me for not posting and for "lying" about not putting this on hiatus was not appreciated (also... what? It was like one week bro, probably most people didn't notice.)

But anyway, here is chapter five!

* * *

Sadie heard Darius call her name from inside his office. It was mid-afternoon in Toronto, but it was 3 AM in Shanghai, and Sadie was feeling the effects of the jetlag.

She walked into his office, yawning. "Yeah, D?"

"I was just checking my voicemail." Darius said, getting up and coming around to the front of his desk, leaning against it.

"Yes, and?" She asked impatiently.

"It was a friend, in the police department. A couple of years ago I asked him for a favor."

_Please say he didn't cover up another murder for you._ She thought, but didn't say. "What favor?"

"You remember Megan."

"Megan... You mean psycho fan Megan? Threatened my sister Megan? How could I forget?"

"I asked that if she were to ever be released, that he call me."

"They let her go?!" Sadie asked, suddenly furious.

"Two months ago. She was in a hospital, not a prison. And she never hurt anyone. It was her first offense. They couldn't have held her."

"She held Jude hostage with a nail gun, D! She's a danger to society!"

"The doctor said that she'd done well in the hospital. She made a lot of progress. She's medicated, and in court-ordered therapy, and they determined that she wasn't dangerous."

"Then why are you telling me this?"

Darius hesitated. "She missed a session with her therapist."

"She what?"

"They're not sure. But she's supposed to meet with her psychiatrist three times a week, and she's missed her last few appointments."

"So she's what, gone?"

"They don't know." He sighed. "They're looking for her."

"Darius, is Jude in danger?"

"Sadie..."

"Is my sister in danger? Is she?!" Sadie asked again, edging towards hysteria. "Goddammit, Darius. Tell me!"

"Sadie." Darius said, firmly. "Calm down."

Sadie took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Sorry."

"Do you know the chances that she would be able to hurt Jude? They don't even know that she's really gone. She's probably in her home in Toronto. Even if she is missing, she could have gotten in an accident, she could have gone to see a family member and not told anyone, she could be with a boyfriend. And even if she somehow got to London, even if she somehow found Bermondsey, she couldn't find where Jude lives, and I'm sure Nora Richards keeps good security."

"So Jude is okay."

"Jude is fine."

"Then why are you telling me this?"

"Because... She threatened you too, back then." Darius lowered his voice. "I worry about you."

"You do not." Sadie said, with a smile, blushing. "Don't lie."

"No lie. You're my right hand." He said, teasing, placing a hand casually on her lower back. "My girl. The one I depend on to help me out... you make my coffee, organize my files..." His hand slid a little lower. "Other things."

"Oh, hush, D." She rolled her eyes, but couldn't suppress her grin.

He winked, then said, more seriously. "I mean it. You're going to stay with me until this is cleared up."

Sadie nodded. "Okay. But Jude is safe?"

"She should be."

"Should I tell her?"

"You don't need to. Don't worry her, but if you want to, let her know that it wouldn't hurt her to get a bodyguard for when she's out. But I know T, and if Jude was in danger, he wouldn't let anyone within a mile of her. And besides, that girl can take care of herself."

"But it wouldn't hurt?"

"More security never hurts. And Nora would agree with me."

.

When Tommy was not home, as Jude had known he wouldn't be, but hoped for anyway, the dreaded tears started again. With shaking hands, she dialed his number.

His calm, recorded, voice came from her phone. "You've reached Tom Quincy. Leave a message."

"Dammit, Tommy!" She shouted "How can you do this to me again?!" She hung up the phone and let out a frustrated little sob.

It wasn't _fair_.

Just then, her phone rang, and her heart leapt, but the ringtone wasn't the one she used for Tommy. "Hey, Sades." She answered. She tried to hide the pain in her voice, but it sounded wobbly. "What's up?"

"Good, I didn't wake you? We just got back to Toronto a few hours ago and my time zones are all messed up."

"It's only like, 9 PM here." She sniffled.

"Are you okay, Jude?"

"I'm fine." She said, but her voice sounded teary and choked.

"What happened?" Sadie sounded very concerned, even a little bit frightened.

"Nothing. It's not a big deal."

"Jude..."

"We... had a fight."

"What? Who did? You and Tommy?"

"Yes." Jude said quietly.

"About what?"

"He... Sadie, I'm... I'm pregnant." She said it so quietly that Sadie wasn't sure she'd heard right.

"Wait, you're what?!" She practically screeched. Then she lowered her voice to a stage-whisper. "You're _pregnant_?!"

"Yes." her voice was just a squeak.

"Let me guess, Tommy didn't want the kid and he freaked out?"

"No, _I_ didn't want it."

"And, what, he did?"

"Yes." She was crying softly.

"Tom Quincy wants a baby?" Sadie sounded incredulous. "All that commitment, all that responsibility? Little Tommy Q?"

"That's how I reacted. And he got really mad and... and..." She trailed off.

"And he left again." Sadie finished. Jude didn't correct her. "Goddammit. I am going to _kill_ him." Sadie said, sounding furious.

"_No_. He was... He doesn't think he's good enough."

Sadie scoffed. "That's because he's not."

"Sadie!" Jude protested.

"He's not!" She insisted. "He is not good enough for you. I know you love him, and he obviously loves you. I mean, when he's not pulling stuff like this, you're so sweet together it's disgusting, but he is _not_ good enough for you. Has he called?"

"No."

Under her breath, Sadie called Tommy something very impolite, then sighed and said "He will. He'll come back like he always does. He needs you, Jude. He's just too scared, and too stupid to realize it. And this decision is _yours_ to make, okay? Not his."

"I don't know what to do, Sadie."

"Do you need me to fly out there?"

Jude sighed. "No."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. You have work to do."

"Jude, I'm serious. If you need me, I'll be on a plane in an hour. I'm your big sister. That is so much more important than G Major."

"No, I'm okay. I have..." Sadie would kill her if she told her that she'd been hanging out with Alexander again. She was an advocate for clean breaks, and she had liked Alexander. Underneath her sisterly support, Jude knew, Sadie disapproved of the way Jude had handled things with him the first time. Her sister would certainly yell at her for leading him on if she found out. "I have Emily. If I need you to come, I'll tell you."

"You're absolutely sure?"

"I swear on anything you want. They need you in Toronto. I'm fine."

"The second you need me, you call me. Promise?"

"Promise. Just don't tell anyone else, okay? I really don't want it to get into the media, and I don't want Dad to find out, not yet."

"Of course, Jude, of course."

"Not Darius either."

"I don't tell him everything!" Sadie insisted.

"Fine. Thank you, Sadie. Why did you call in the first place?"

Sadie hesitated, wondering whether dumping the news about Megan's release and disappearance on Jude was really the best idea at the moment. She thought about Jude all alone in her apartment, scared enough already, and decided it wasn't worth upsetting her even more. "I was just checking in. I haven't talked to you since before we left for China, and I wanted to call and say hi. And apparently it's a good thing that I did."

"Oh. How was China?"

"It was alright. A lot of business stuff, strange food, lots of people. But overall pretty boring. You're sure you're okay?"

"Sadie, I'm fine. Stop it."

"Okay. It's just that you said that the last time, and you were so _not_ fine."

'The last time' probably meant when they'd broken up in New Brunswick, or possibly further back, when Tommy had left almost without warning to take care of Darius's daughter. Both times she'd been broken, devastated. Once she had ruined an album, the other time she'd blown off a performance and ended up getting blackmailed.

She would not spend another night having an emotional breakdown in her apartment by herself. She would not let his leaving cripple her as it had in the past. She would not end up the victim. She would be a grown-up.

So after Sadie hung up, having asked Jude if she was okay several more times, Jude wrote.

As she had on the nights right after she'd left Toronto when she'd wanted so badly to call Tommy, she locked herself away in her sound-proofed music room and buried herself in her music. By the time she fell asleep on the couch with her face on her notebook and body curled around her guitar, she had written 8 complete songs, and parts of at least 20 others. In the morning she would read through the lyrics, and not all of them would be profound, not all of them good, not all of them workable (though she'd end up with lines like "Waiting, when I'm waiting/don't you know/I've been here before, and I don't care where I'm going/So I'll stay..." that she'd later use), but writing allowed her to escape a little, process a little, and eventually she stopped feeling as though she'd break apart.

* * *

**A/N: **your readership is appreciated, and your review would be too!


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning Jude, nauseous, exhausted, still with no contact from Tommy, and with a killer crick in her neck, was stopped by Emily as she walked in the door.

"Jude!" Emily said brightly. "Sorry I wasn't here yesterday! I texted you, did you get it?" As she talked, they walked to the little room Emily used as an office.

"Hey, Em." Jude said, looking tired. She didn't think she could go through this right now. As much as she loved Emily, and as much as she'd needed a shoulder to cry on yesterday, she'd finally found herself able to shut the feelings away, and she was too exhausted right now to rehash it all.

Emily closed the door behind her and said. "You never texted me back! What happened with... you know... And where's Tom?"

"Oh, that." Jude tried to sound nonchalant. "Negative. And yeah... um... Tommy's really sick today, flu or something. He must have caught it from me, you know I've been sick the last week or so, but he's got it a lot worse than I did."

"But you're not–"

"Nope. False alarm."

"And that's a good thing?"

"Yeah, I mean, the timing is just off, you know. So I'm glad."

"Do you think you'd ever want kids?"

"I don't know. We haven't really talked about it. Maybe some day."

"Well, good then."

"Thanks, Em. For getting me the stuff. Yeah, thanks for everything."

"No problem." She hesitated. "Jude, you don't look so good, you alright?"

"Yeah," She lied some more. "I just didn't get much sleep." Now that was technically the truth.

"Why not?"

"He was really sick last night." She made what she hoped was an appropriate face for when one had been up all night with their sick boyfriend.

"Oh, the poor thing." Emily said, looking sympathetic. "If you want, I can try to talk Mum into letting you go home to take care of him. Or I could go and check on him."

"No, it's fine. He was sleeping when I left." the lies just kept coming, the image of her kissing a sick Tommy on his forehead, slightly too warm from fever, as she left for work was a comforting replacement for the reality in which she'd woken up by herself, with no idea where he was or when he'd return. "I think he'll be okay. He just needs some rest at this point. I'll go home at lunch and see how he's doing. And if he needs anything he said he'd call." She choked up a little on that last part, though she tried not to let it show, because he _had_ said he'd call, and she'd shouted at him not to, and now...

"Okay, if you're sure. You really look upset."

"I'm just really tired." She insisted. "But could you tell Nora that that's where Tommy is? I didn't want to make him wake up to call in himself. We're skipping out on that party tonight, too, obviously. But he should be back by Monday. I mean, he'd better be." _God, _she thought. _What'll I do if he's not?_

"Of course. Let him know I hope he feels better"

"Thanks, Em."

"Sure thing."

.

Jude couldn't concentrate. She was mixing the instrumentals for a song she and Tommy had written together on tour, and the memories were ruthless flashes of cities and crowds and kissing in her head.

Being in New York was magnificent. Despite its relative proximity to her native Toronto, Jude had only been twice. Once when she was 9, when her dad had been promoted and the family had gone on a celebratory 3-day trip over spring break, and once with Kat's family the summer before they'd started high school.

The demand for Jude Harrison concert tickets in New York City was so high that they had played shows there three nights in a row. It was so vocally demanding that they'd had to schedule it right before her week off in Toronto for fear she'd lose her voice and not be able to perform after.

"You really haven't spent much time here, have you?" Tommy said with a smile, when Jude was looking out the tinted limo windows, staring at the skyscrapers.

"Is it that obvious?" She asked, sheepishly

Tommy laughed. "For the record, looking up" He pointed upwards at the buildings. "in New York is the fastest way to get pegged as a tourist."

She laughed too. "If tourist is the worst they can say about me, it's a good day."

"Jude Harrison: beautiful, talented, sexy tourist." he said in a low voice, leaning in towards her so his lips were inches away from hers, and she rolled her eyes, but blushed and giggled in spite of herself, biting her lip and moving slightly so their mouths were dangerously, deliciously close.

"Oi!" came a voice from the other side of the limo, and Jude and Tommy moved apart again. Max, the drummer, was rolling his eyes. "Get a room, would you?"

"What, like you and every girl from here to London?" Jude shot back.

"I can't help that they all want a piece of this!"

Jude rolled her eyes "Besides, we're not together, remember?"

"Riiight." Nicola intoned dryly. "You know the media's only going to buy that for so long, Jude." There had never been a point at which Tommy and Jude had officially decided that they weren't going to bother hiding their relationship from Nicola and the band, but when the six of them spent nearly all their time together, and with Tommy and Jude in a full-blown honeymoon phase, they'd pretty much given up within the first couple of weeks.

"I might tell 'em myself" Max said. "You two get off on this forbidden love thing. It's disgusting."

"You wouldn't dare." Nicola narrowed her eyes.

"Trusted source from inside Jude Harrison's band confirms secret love affair between Harrison and hair-gelled sensation Little Tommy Q!" Max teased, as though he was writing a headline. Chris and Aaron, the other two members of her band, laughed and high-fived him.

"Jude Harrison's drummer found dead by side of road!" Tommy retorted.

"Oh! Bring it, boyband!"

"Don't tempt me, kid."

"I am the only adult on this tour, I swear to God." Nicola said, rolling her eyes and taking a drink.

When they got to the hotel, there were paparazzi swarming it.

"What?" Jude groaned. "There are so many hotels in New York City. How did they know this one was ours?"

"It's the closest five-start hotel to the concert venue, and everyone knows it's only the best for Jude Harrison." Chris said, dryly. "Welcome to America."

"Alright, everyone, big smiles." Nicola said as the limo driver opened the door. "Tom, you first, then Jude you go with the band."

"Tommy!" the paparazzi, held back by hotel security, called at him as soon as he stepped out of the car. "Can you comment on your secret relationship with Jude Harrison? Tommy! Tommy!"

"I am Jude's co-producer." Tommy said dryly.

"Can you confirm the rumors that you and Jude have eloped?! Mr. Quincy!"

He rolled his eyes. "No comment."

Jude, for her part, just laughed and put an arm around Aaron's shoulders as she walked in. He kissed her on the cheek as they walked through the door, and Jude said "Oh God, now you've confused them."

"Lips to yourself, kid." Tommy said with mock jealousy when they got in the elevator.

"Ew." Jude made a face.

"Hey!" Aaron protested. "I am a _sex god_."

"It would be like kissing my annoying little brother, you idiot."

"You're not my type anyway, sis."

"Good to know" Jude rolled her eyes as they got out of the elevator.

"Jude, Tommy." Nicola said. "You're in 2803."

"What, both of us?" Tommy laughed.

Nicola rolled her eyes. "I got tired of wasting the extra room."

"You can still pretend to be sneaking around, mate, if that's what you need to make it hot enough." Max said, sarcastically. "I'll even pretend I really think you're getting ice again, if you want."

"Oh, and we can all pretend Jude's not wearing your shirt at breakfast." Chris added.

"Oh, shove off, all of you. And for the record, it is plenty hot." Jude winked, and took the room key from Nicola as Tommy snickered and the guys made gagging noises.

"You've got a sound check. Meet downstairs at 3:00. Sharp. 'My watch is set to Paris time' is not an excuse this time, Max." Nicola said, handing the remaining room keys to Chris and going to her own room, adding "If you need anything, take care of it yourselves."

When she and Tommy got into their room, Jude sighed. "As hot as it is," she said sarcastically "this sneaking around thing is getting ridiculous."

"Agreed." Tommy said, kissing her. "What do you want to do, go out there and answer one of their inane questions?"

Jude shook her head. "I have a plan."

So at her final New York City concert, after they'd played through the set, she went to the mic and addressed the audience. "Everyone who's been illegally recording me so they can put it on YouTube should get their camera phones back out now." The audience laughed. "Got them? Okay, good. You're going to want to get this. So I know there have been some rumours going around about me and Tom Quincy. Evidently, you all think we're having some super secret love affair." The crowd cheered and screamed, Jude laughed and waited for them to quiet down before saying "And we just wanted to put those to rest tonight, once and for all." The audience made general noises of disapproval. Tommy came up next to Jude and touched her on the shoulder so she knew he was there as she said "So I want to make this completely clear. Tommy and I are _not_ in a secret relationship."

She turned to Tommy, who whispered "You sure about this?"

"Absolutely." Jude whispered back, and quickly stood on her tiptoes, putting her hands on either side of his face. Tommy laced a hand through her hair, his other arm going quickly around her waist, pulling her against him and kissing her. There was a second of relative quiet in which the audience seemed to be trying to figure out what had just happened. Jude broke away, turned back to the mic and said "It's not a secret." They kissed again and the crowd went completely nuts.

At every concert after that for the rest of the tour, plus almost every time they went out in public for the next three weeks, someone would start chanting "kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss" and they'd kiss to thunderous applause.

.

"Hey, Jude." Chris knocked on the door, despite having already opened it. "You need me to record that second guitar part for Lights today, yeah?"

"Oh!" Jude said, startled out of her memories. "Yeah, just give me a minute to set up."

"Are you okay?" He asked it casually. Chris being concerned was very much similar to Chris being indifferent, and this time Jude was grateful for that.

"I'm fine! Why does everyone keep asking that?"

"It could be because you look like hell, sis." On tour, the band had taken to calling her "sis" in reference to the "annoying little brother" comment she'd made about Aaron, and the nickname had stuck.

"Gee, thanks, _bro_." Jude said sarcastically.

"Any time. Where's boyband?"

"Tommy's sick."

"Sick, huh? But everything's okay with you and him?"

"Yeah, it's fine, why wouldn't it be?" Jude said, too defensively.

Chris shrugged. "I saw you leave with Alex yesterday."

"Shit." Jude crumpled. "It's nothing, I swear."

"So... not fine, I take it?"

She groaned. "I don't know. I can't get ahold of him."

"Did you split up?"

"What? No! We just had a little fight."

He raised his eyebrows. "Little?"

"Okay, it was bad." Jude admitted.

"He left?"

"No! I mean... not like that. He's coming back. He just... he needed... I mean...I needed... space. We're fine. We just needed a couple of days to work stuff out separately."

"Hmm. So you're spending time with Alex again?"

"Don't judge me, Chris."

"No judgement, just worry."

"About me or him?"

"Both, I guess. But... him. I mean, Alex and I have never been friends, but I've known him for long enough to know you seriously hurt him."

"It's just that... Tommy and I were... and Alex wasn't... But... But I..." She stammered.

"Hey, like I said, no judgement. If you're sure it won't end badly, it doesn't matter to me."

"I'm not going to hurt him. He knows that we're not getting back together. He knows I'm with Tommy."

"If you say so, sis. We going to record?"

"Yeah." Jude said gratefully. This is what she liked most about Chris. He knew when to stop pushing.

"Okay. You good?"

"I'm good. Thanks."

* * *

**A/N: **Oh hay more tour flashbacks. I know everyone liked Paris a lot, but this one was my favorite.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Hello again lovely readers!

To atthtt (you should get an account so I can reply to you in private :P): Sorry to disappoint, but the Buenos Aires flashback you keep asking for isn't coming. Sort of the point of that whole thing is that they don't remember it very clearly, and in my opinion, a drunken sex scene isn't terribly interesting to write or read (I mean, unless there's something particularly interesting about it, like if it's between two characters who don't normally sleep together, or if some secret is revealed in the course of the scene, etc., but in this particular case, just another night on tour wouldn't be a flashback that would contribute to the storyline.)

aaand without further ado, voilà, chapitre sept!

* * *

Like clockwork, Alex called right at 12:15. Jude had just finished up recording with Chris.

"Boyband?" Chris's voice in her headphones asked.

She sighed. "Alex."

Chris raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment, pulling out his own phone and saying "We done?"

"Yeah. You can take lunch. Thanks."

"Sorry, Alex." She said, after calling him back. "I was recording. What's up?"

"Did he come back?"

She sighed. "Not yet."

"I'm sorry, Jude." He actually did an okay job of pretending he meant that, Jude thought. "So... lunch?"

"I guess."

"Oh." Alex was unable to hide his disappointment. "Sorry. If you don't want to..."

"It's not that, sorry. I'm just... really tired. I didn't get much sleep last night."

"If you'd rather not, we don't have to."

"It's fine. We can. I just won't be particularly good company."

"You're always good company."

She smiled in spite of herself. "Thanks, Alex." Then she remembered her lie to Emily, and how Chris had seen them yesterday. "You know what, though? I have to get something from home first, so could you just pick me up from there?"

"Sure. Can't wait."

.

"You have the most pretentious name in the world, you know that?" Jude teased Alex as they drove.

"What? I do not!"

"You do." She insisted. "Alexander Bartholomew Clifton III." she said the name in a mock posh accent. "Really? The third?"

"That's not pretentious! It's my dad's name and my granddad's name! That makes me the third!" He laughed, "And what about you? Jude and Sadie Harrison. Beatles fans, much?"

"That's not pretentious, it's cute." She insisted. "The Beatles are amazing, and my name being a reference to them is cool."

"Of course it is." Alex said, fake-sarcastically.

"Says the guy whose initials are ABC. Hold on, wait. Don't all your sisters have the same initials? Anna–"

"Annabelle Brittany, Ashleigh Beth, Alexander Bartholomew, and Alanna Brianne. Yeah, yeah. My parents thought they were clever."

"ABC." She laughed. "I can't believe I never knew that before! That's ridiculous."

"Technically Anna's last name is Dyer now. So that's... oh no. That's not better is it."

Jude laughed "So she's Annabelle Brittany Clifton Dyer. ABCD. Seriously? Oh my God, that's great. From now on you are only allowed to marry women with a last name starting with D."

"From now on?" He laughed. "You say that as though I'm a habitual polygamist! I've only ever been engaged the once, you know." It was the kind of thing that Jude would have expected him to follow with a sad smile, or at least that he would get quiet, but he remained smiling as they pulled up to the restaurant.

"Wait, this is where we're eating?" She asked. The place gave her an odd sense of déjà vu for some reason.

"Yeah, is that alright?"

"It's fine, I just.. why do I recognize it? Have we eaten here before?"

"Probably." Alex shrugged. "We've eaten lots of places. We were together for a long time. I don't remember specifically."

Jude examined his face when he said that, but his smile still didn't falter. "Alright."

They ate in the same light atmosphere they had had at dinner the night before. Jude was genuinely enjoying herself, becoming more and more sure that her decision to spend time with Alexander had been the right one.

"When do you have to be back at work?" Alex asked when they were finishing up their meal.

"Well, I have quite a bit to do for this song, but I don't really have to be back for another hour or so. Why?"

"I had something planned just in case."

Jude raised her eyebrows. "Well okay then."

.

"Voila!" Alex said. He had led her, blindfolded, despite her protests, and now he removed the strip of cloth to reveal a picnic basket sitting on a bench. They were by the river, in one of the increasingly rare spots of grass in the middle of the city.

"Alex," She laughed. "we already ate."

"Aha! Indeed we did. But not dessert."

"I can't believe you did all of this!"

"It was no trouble" Alex insisted.

"It's great." It was lovely. Perfect, even. Something was nagging at her, though, making her increasingly uncomfortable. Something was off about this whole thing. Him making her dinner was one thing. She knew he loved to cook, for his friends, for his sisters, whoever, and going out to lunch together was something a lot of friends did. But something about this, about the level of effort put into a blindfold, into a picnic in a spot overlooking the river... It was just too much like... like a date...

And that's when it clicked. The restaurant, the spot by the river, all of it, down to the song he'd played in the car on the way. She couldn't believe she hadn't realized sooner. "Alex..." Jude said, frowning.

"Yes?"

"Our first date. We went to that restaurant, and then after we ate, we came down here, to the river."

"Did we?" He asked, as though he was surprised, playing innocent. "I suppose, maybe it was the same res–"

She continued, interrupting him. "And we were having a conversation about The Beatles' White Album, and the first song that played on the radio when we got in the car was Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. We laughed about it, and I know you remember that, because on our anniversary last year we talked about it. I'd forgotten, but you reminded me."

"So?"

"You played that song on the way here."

"I guess I did, but it wasn't intentional."

"Alex!" she protested.

His shoulders slumped. "Alright, fine. You caught me."

She sighed. "But why do all this?"

"Because I'm an idiot."

"Alex..."

"I just thought... I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't." He looked sad, defeated.

"I... I don't know what you think this is. We're friends, we're not... Tommy is..." She sighed frustratedly and said as clearly as she could "Alexander, I am with Tommy."

"Oh, right!" He scoffed, unable to continue filtering his disgust with the man.

Jude was taken aback. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He left you, Jude!"

"He did not!" She snapped. "He's coming back."

"Yeah right. Even if he does, he doesn't deserve you!"

"I love him!" She protested a little shrilly.

"He hurts you! I would never, ever hurt you, Jude."

"I know." She sighed without thinking, then shook her head. "But that's not what this is about! Sometimes he messes up, but Tommy loves me!"

"_I_ love you!" He shouted, then seemed immediately to regret it.

"_Alex._" She breathed.

"Wait, Jude... I..." He sighed, exasperated. "No. You know what? I do. I love you. I am still in love with you."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Oh, Alex, I thought... I thought you knew that I don't... You said you were over it. Over me."

"I _lied_, Jude." He said, and before she realized what was happening, he'd leaned forward, grabbed her face in both hands, and was kissing her on the mouth.

She pulled away. "Alexander!" She protested, slapping him hard across the face. "What the hell?!" She stood up, grabbing her purse.

"Jude, wait." He protested. "I shouldn't have done that, I know. I'm sorry, but–"

"No! That was not okay!"

"I know, I agree. I'm really sorry, just wait. Let me drive you back." he stood and took a step forward.

"Stay away from me." She said. "I'll call a cab."

"Jude!"

"No!" She said, turning and walking away. "And don't follow me!" She called without turning.

.

Megan looked at the bottle of pills in her hand. She tipped it back and forth in her fingers, listening to the pills clicking against the plastic. She knew she really ought to take them. She'd been off the medication for nearly a week now, and she was definitely feeling the effects. She felt frantic, manic, the old obsessions were eating at her again, the old anger coloring her vision red. Her very presence here was a side effect of neglecting her cocktail of medications. She needed to take them. All of this was wrong. She was undoing so much progress. She could hear Dr. Murray in her head, chastising her. _You've worked so hard,_ he would say. _Don't throw this away._

It's just that the medication made her feel so... dead inside. Like a zombie. As scary as the mood swings could be, and as frightened as she was sometimes when the voices would start, she still felt somehow more... alive. The pills softened all the sharp edges, calmed the waves, dulled the anger and the pain, but they sapped the color and the joy too. She felt like a flame put under a glass. She was being slowly suffocated.

She wanted to remember what it was like, the emotions. She'd been locked up in that hospital for so long, she couldn't remember who she'd been before. It was like stories she'd heard of war veterans and the captains of ships, who'd suffered countless traumas at the hands of the war or the sea, but upon finding themselves safe at home, wanted nothing more than to be back in the thick of the fighting. She just wanted to be herself for a second. She would stop them for four days, she told herself. Just four days. Long enough for the effects of the drugs to leave her, not long enough for her to get in serious trouble. She'd have to miss an appointment or two, because the doc would be able to tell she hadn't been taking them, but she'd stay away from the things she knew were triggers, and she'd be alright.

But it was the fourth day with no meds when she'd seen that damned interview. It honestly wasn't her fault. She had been looking for something else. She knew she ought to put herself in media blackout if she was really serious about wanting to avoid triggers, but she had the sudden and uncontrollable impulse to watch one of those cheesy soap operas. She started flipping through channels, but _her _face had suddenly filled the screen. Megan had frozen, the memory of the shattered hard drive hitting her in the chest. She wanted to turn it off, but it was like she couldn't make herself look away. The anger surged in her in a way that it hadn't since the trial, the voices hissing in her head. Jude was on her television screen, laughing, smiling, talking about her tour, and _he_ was sitting next to her. Megan couldn't quite process it, at first. It was as if Jude's voice from the television was coming from a long way off, and it took her a long time to compute what was being said.

"You've had quite a crazy last couple of years!" the interviewer was saying.

Jude laughed. "I suppose I have."

"You suppose! A new record label, a new country, an album, an engagement, a tour, and of course Tom Quincy!"

"Of course Tom Quincy" Jude repeated, laughing. She turned and lightly kissed the man next to her. It couldn't be true, but somehow it was. Tom Quincy. Tommy. Jude and Tommy. Kissing on television.

No. _No_. What? Megan couldn't make it make sense. Jude and Tommy were over. She left him when she left Canada. That was the last thing she'd heard about Jude before she went into the hospital and a dose of the medications had been found that muted her obsessions. But now they were kissing on an interviewer's couch. How could that possibly be? It couldn't. Maybe it was an old interview, she told herself. But Jude hadn't gone on tour with G-Major since 2004, and he'd said 'a new country'. And the man doing the interview was English...

"–didn't see each other for two years– engaged to another– came to London." It was like Megan's hearing was cutting in an out, only bits and pieces getting to her brain.

"It didn't end because of Tommy." Jude was speaking now. "we split up for other reasons."

"And you were never over her?" The interviewer asked Tommy. And then Tommy was _singing._

"_if I said I was truly over you..." _

Their song. He was signing their song. Her song. The anger that surged through Megan was so strong it made her shake. The voices in her head were protesting, growing louder, beginning to hiss over one another until it sounded like a pit of angry snakes.

"That's the basement song, isn't it?" The man asked.

"2 AM is a good song, and I'm proud of it." Jude said. "In spite of the circumstances it was written under."

"That must have been such a traumatic experience, though. How were you able get past that to record and release the song?"

"I was not going to let one crazy fan holding me hostage dictate what I do with my own music." Jude said firmly.

_One crazy fan._ Crazy _fan_?! Jude couldn't possibly be referring to _her_. No way. She wasn't a _fan_. They had been friends! Sure, she had messed up with the whole basement thing, but Jude was her friend! How could she call her a FAN? As if she was some random stalker Jude had never met and never cared for?! The voices were screaming now, a chorus of angry cries.

Before Megan even knew what was happening, she had smashed a chair through the television screen and begun racing around her apartment, packing a bag, and spending nearly every penny she had on a trans-atlantic plane ticket, shoving the rest of her cash in her backpack.

And now she was here in the London airport staring at a bottle of pills, undoing every bit of progress she had ever made. She held the pill bottle over a trash bin, her hand shaking, trying to reason with the part of herself that was screaming for revenge, trying to listen to the doctor in her head.

_She thinks you were just a fan._ A voice made itself distinct from the chorus of hissing and the others echoed it, drowning out Dr. Murray's voice of reason.

As a taxi pulled up, Megan let the pills she was holding fall into the garbage, dumped the rest of the bottles, and climbed into the cab.

"Where to, miss?" The driver asked.

Megan smiled. "Bermondsey records, please."

* * *

**A/N: **To be honest, I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, especially the first part. It was one of the last things I wrote, just to fill in some holes and hold the story together, so it just doesn't flow right, or something. I don't know. It's one of the parts that sort of highlights the reasons I don't like this story as much as I liked Happy Birthday.

I say this not to be self-depricating, but to ask that if anyone has any advice, the more specific the better, it would be very much appreciated.

I do like the Megan bit in this story though, I have to say. Without spoiling it, there's more to come, and I really am quite proud of some of it.


	8. Chapter 8

Alexander pulled into the parking lot of Bermondsey Records. It had been an hour since Jude had stormed away from him, and Alex had spent the time panicking. How had he been so stupid? How could he have really thought that Jude would take him back? Quincy had been gone for two days, and Jude was still in denial about it. It would take her so much longer than two days to get over him, no matter how badly he had hurt her. And she was _pregnant with his child._

How could he have been such an idiot? Oh God. He had kissed her. Why would he ever have done something like that? He'd blurted out that he was in love with her, and now she'd never speak to him again.

Alex got out of his car, determined to make Jude accept his apology. He'd claim insanity, blame the full moon, do _something_. He'd make her believe that he was over her, that today was just a fluke, that he'd felt nothing when he'd kissed her.

Wait. That was good. Actually, that was perfect.

He'd tell her he'd kissed her because he'd needed to prove to himself that he was over her. He'd say he knew it was wrong, and that he hadn't been thinking, and he was really sorry, but he'd been so unsure with the way they'd left things, and he hadn't been sure he was really ready to move on. But then he'd kissed her, and he'd felt nothing. He was over her, for good this time. He knew it, because he'd kissed her and felt no fireworks.

Yes. That was good. She'd believe that, as long as he could keep his stupid, desperate infatuation out of his expression. And he knew her. Even if she didn't quite believe it, she'd want to badly enough that she might let it go. Alex knew she needed him somehow, or she wouldn't have agreed to go to lunch with him today. She still felt something for him, even if it was covered up by her feelings about Quincy. He was becoming more confident that her pathetic excuse for a boyfriend wasn't coming back any time soon. When Tommy didn't return, Jude would come back to him, as long as he didn't do anything stupid like he'd done today.

_I felt nothing, I felt nothing, I felt nothing._ Alex recited to himself as he walked into the lobby of Bermondsey, heading straight for Jude's studio. It would be for the best if he could convince himself, too, at least for now.

"Woah!" A deep voice from his left startled him, an arm thrown out in front of his chest. "Where you think you're going?"

Alex rolled his eyes. It was Mateo, an old bodyguard of his aunt's. He'd worked for Bermondsey since Alex was in the fifth form. "Mateo, I don't have time. I need to talk to Jude." He tried to push past.

Mateo grabbed his shoulders and forced him to take a step back, stepping in front of him and crossing his arms. "Not right now you don't." He admonished in his Spanish accent, raising an eyebrow.

"Mateo, I know you're bigger than me and everything, but I haven't been afraid of you since I was sixteen. This isn't funny."

"Alexander, I am not joking. You cannot see Jude. She wants to work, and she tells me to keep everyone out except for the band, Nora, and Tom Quincy. You are not on that list."

"Come on, Mateo, it's me. You know. Me and Jude... She won't mind if I go and talk to her."

"Nice try. You think I don't know that you and Jude are no more a couple? Is old news. She is with Quincy now. If she says she is working and no one can interrupt, no one interrupts."

"Look, I really really need to talk to her. It'll take five minutes."

"I have my orders. Sorry. You can wait over there for her to finish her work," He pointed to the chairs in the lobby "or you can go home, and call her later, but you cannot see her while she works today."

"Fine." Alex sighed, exasperated, and muttered, "I thought we were friends."

Mateo laughed. "I like you, Alex, but I like my job more." He shook his head "If this is how Jude's day is when she works, I can understand why she has to tell me to keep people out"

"What do you mean?"

"It has been less than an hour since she went in, and already two people have come to interrupt."

"Two?"

Mateo nodded. "That woman over there." he gestured to a pale woman in a black jacket. She was sitting in a chair in the lobby and tapping her foot anxiously. "She says she must see Jude, I tell her Jude is working, she says she is old friend of Jude, I tell her Jude is working. I wonder if I should not just kick her out of here." He muttered. "She has crazy eyes."

The woman didn't look particularly crazy to Alex, just nervous, and he frowned. "Nice."

"You are just mad that I am not letting you in." Mateo's phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket, looking down at it. Alex saw a chance to step around him, but Mateo was smarter than that, and grabbed Alex by the arm, glaring and pointing to the door. Alex rolled his eyes, but turned and walked away. He would just have to wait and talk to Jude when she finished work, or when she stopped to take a coffee break.

"Mateo stopped you too?" He asked Jude's old friend casually as he sat down in the chair next to hers.

She jumped, startled, and looked up at him, pulling the nail she had been biting out of her mouth.

"Sorry." Alex laughed. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Mateo? That's the bodyguard?" She asked. He recognized her accent as Canadian.

"Yeah. That's him. Apparently Jude is not to be disturbed today." He said bitterly. "I'm Alex, by the way. I'm Jude's... Well, Jude was my..." He sighed, then shook his head and smiled. "Anyway, I'm Alex. I don't think we've met."

"We haven't." She said, looking away from him, fearful that he'd recognize her from TV or something. She looked quite different now, with her hair its natural wavy blonde, and without the dark eye makeup she'd worn in those days, but she couldn't take the chance of someone recognizing her and stopping her before she could get to Jude.

"But you're an old friend of Jude's? I thought I'd met most of her friends."

"We had sort of a falling out. A long time ago." She muttered, wishing he would go away.

"Oh! You must be Kat!" Alex exclaimed.

"What?" Megan looked up, confused. She forced herself to focus through the swirling in her head, through the whispering of voices.

"Sorry, Jude used to talk about you."

"She did?" Megan froze, not knowing whether to panic.

"Yeah. You're Kat, right? You and Jude and Jamie were friends when you were in school, but you two had some sort of fight and haven't talked since."

Megan concentrated for a second, sorting through what she had said. He didn't recognize her. He thought she was some childhood friend of Jude's. He had called her Kat. "Yes." She said. "Kat. That's me. Yes. I'm Kat. Sorry, I must be really jetlagged." She tried to laugh.

"Nice to finally meet you." He frowned as he thought more about the stories Jude had told him of Kat. "It's funny, though, I thought I'd seen pictures of you. You looked quite a bit different."

"I do look different." She said hastily. "It's been years."

"Yeah, but the person I'm thinking of couldn't have been you. She was quite a bit darker, curly hair..."

"Maybe that wasn't actually me?" Megan said with a shrug, trying to sound calm and natural.

Alex's frown cleared. "Must not have been." He shrugged too. "So you're here to see Jude?"

"Yeah. It's been so long since we've talked, I just wanted to... remind her. Of what we had." Megan couldn't keep her hands from tightening into fists, but luckily Alex wasn't paying attention.

"Good luck with that. The only person she wants to talk to is Tom Quincy." He scowled as he said the name. "No matter what he does to her, she'll keep coming back for more." he muttered.

"Ugh." Megan agreed. "I can't believe she's still with that asshole. All he's ever done is hurt her. She's still a fucking Tommyholic after all these years."

Alex looked surprised. "You don't like Tommy?"

"Jude deserves better. All I ever wanted was to make her see that."

Alex didn't see just how menacingly Megan said that, nor did he see the way her hand went to her pocket, fingers curling around the knife she'd wrapped carefully in her gloves. "Finally someone agrees with me." He said. "Around here, everyone seems to think they're a match made in heaven."

"Is he with her right now? In the studio?" How stupid of her to not consider that he might be there! He was sort of a big guy, and Megan wasn't sure she could overpower him. That could have ruined everything. If Tommy was around, she would need to modify her plan.

"No. They had some sort of a fight and he left two days ago." Alex smirked unkindly. Megan's heart leapt. "If you ask me, their relationship is as good as over." He seemed to realize what he was saying, looking at her suddenly, guilty. "Don't tell anyone I said that." _Idiot._ a voice in his head chastised. What if she was some sort of a reporter? "Please. I didn't mean it. I don't want that to end up in the tabloids. I'm nobody anyway. Not a good source."

"I won't repeat it. Promise." Megan put her hands up, trying not to look too excited at the fact that Jude would be alone. "Don't worry. My business is with Jude, not with the tabloids."

As Megan was talking, out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw Jude exiting the studio and heading towards hospitality. He sprung up. "Jude!" He called as he walked quickly towards where she was making herself a cup of tea.

She whirled around to look at him, once again hoping for a split second that he might be Tommy, but when she saw it was Alex, her face quickly transformed into a glare. "Get out of here, Alexander."

"Jude, I need two minutes. Just let me explain. Please." He grabbed her arm.

She shook him off. "Leave me alone! I'm working! For God's sake."

"You just have to let me explain. I'm really sorry, alright?"

"Get out!" She practically screamed, shoving him away and spilling hot water all over her hand in the process. "Ow! Goddammit!" She had drawn the attention of Mateo, who was by Alex's side in a flash, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away from Jude, towards the door.

"Okay, alright!" Alex said, pulling his arm out of Mateo's grip and putting his hands up. "I'm going, I'm going!" He looked at Jude. "Please can we talk later?"

"Just go, Alex." Jude said, sounding tired. She didn't have much of a right to be angry, after all. All of this was her fault. "Just let me work."

"But we can talk later?"

"Fine. Please just... not right now."

"Alright." Alex nodded. "Just know that I'm really sorry."

"Alexander" Mateo said, crossing his arms.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm leaving. I'll talk to you later, Jude." He turned and walked towards the door.

Jude ran her burned hand under cold water, watching Mateo follow Alexander through the lobby.

"You." Mateo said to a blonde woman sitting in a chair. "You go too. You can find Jude another time." Jude didn't recognize her. Probably she was a reporter or something, overeager and trying to bypass the publicity people to talk to Jude directly.

Actually, there _was _something familiar about her, now that Jude thought about it. The woman looked over her shoulder at Jude for maybe half a second before quickly looking away and walking out with her head down, but that half second chilled Jude to the bone.

But it couldn't be, Jude reassured herself. Megan couldn't be here in London, she was in a mental hospital in Toronto. She shook her head. God, now the stress of everything was making her see things.

"Tommy" She whispered to herself, sitting down at the sound board and putting her head in her hands. "Where the hell are you?"

.

"Sorry I monopolized Jude like that, Kat." Alex said to Megan as they exited Bermondsey. "I just... we really need to talk.

"It would have been a bad time anyway." It would have been, she realized. If Jude had seen her for longer than a split second, and had recognized her, it could have ruined everything.

"Do you need a ride somewhere?" Alex asked.

"Jude's apartment!" Megan answered too quickly and far too enthusiastically.

Alex hadn't been paying too much attention, and had missed most of her strange behavior, but that reaction finally set off alarm bells. "I'm sorry?"

"I just meant..." Megan realised she'd made a mistake. "I mean, do you know where Jude lives? So I could, you know, talk to her later, when I'm not being stopped by a bodyguard?"

"Um..." Alex hesitated. After all, he didn't actually know this woman. There was the possibility she was a fan, a stalker, some kind of reporter... and even if she wasn't, and she was who she said she was, Jude might not like it if her estranged friend showed up outside her door unannounced. "You know what? I'll give you Jude's number, and you can just ring her and ask where she wants to meet you, alright?"

"Of course." Megan tried to hide her disappointment. "I guess it would be weird to just show up at her door, wouldn't it? God, jetlag. It really messes with my brain. I didn't get enough sleep on the airplane, clearly." She laughed again, too brightly, and it came off forced.

"Right, yeah. I know how that can be." Alex was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. "Here, have you got a pen?" Megan reached into her immaculately organized backpack (the meticulous organization was a leftover habit from the hospital), took out a pen, tore a page from her notebook, and handed them both to Alexander, who wrote Jude's number down. At the last minute, he made the decision to write the wrong number for the last digit, so the number wouldn't actually work. He figured it was better to be safe than sorry, and there was just something about this woman that was... off, despite their shared opinion on Tom Quincy. "I've got to get to work, sorry. It was nice meeting you, Kat." Alex said quickly, smiling.

"Nice meeting you, Alex. Good luck." He looked confused. "With Jude, I mean." Megan clarified.

Alex nodded. "Right, thank you."

As she watched him get into his car, something clicked, and she knew what to do. His hatred of Quincy, his frantic apologies to Jude, and something he'd said when he'd introduced himself. _'I'm Jude's... Well, Jude was my...' _He was the ex-fiancé, and he was desperate to get back together with Jude. She would bet anything he'd be going to her apartment later.

She waved down a taxi just as Alex started his car. "This is going to sound strange," she told the driver, "but can you follow the man in that green car, please? But don't make it obvious that you're following him."

The driver gave her an extremely odd look. "What?"

Megan was beginning to panic as Alex began to pull out. "He's my boyfriend." She blurted. "and I think he's seeing someone else." She made every effort to look the suspicious lover, making a show of sniffling. She would turn on the waterworks if she had to.

"This isn't CSI: London, love." He said, but he was looking at her with pity now instead of suspicion.

She pulled out the wad of cash she'd gotten earlier by hocking everything valuable she had. "Are you sure?" She asked.

He laughed. "Alright, alright. That guy there you said?"

"Yes! Thank you so much."

"Well, you know what they say about a woman scorned."

Megan smiled and slipped her hand into her jacket pocket to feel the handle of the knife again. "Hell hath no fury.

* * *

**A/N:** So this chapter is long and the next one is really short, because I really wanted to end this chapter there...


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: **Happy Friday! Very short chapter. The last one was too long, and this one's too short, but I _really _wanted to end on "hell hath no fury".

There are three more chapters after this, and I've decided not to include an epilogue, so we're really almost done (told you it was a lot shorter than Happy Birthday)

* * *

After lurking outside of Alexander's work for 45 minutes, the metre eating up her life savings (not that she cared about that; nothing was more important to her than this, than Jude,) he left, and Megan was finally at what appeared to be Jude's home.

"Swakny place." The cab driver muttered appreciatively. "Whoever the girl is, she's doing very well for herself." Maren glared, and he backtracked. "Sorry. She's a cheating tart. Better?" Maren just glared in the direction of the building until the driver got uncomfortable and asked "Does this mean we're done?"

"What? Oh, yes, I think so." She handed him four £100 notes. "Thank you."

"Thank _you_." He said, quickly putting away the money. "You make 'em pay, darling."

"Oh, I will." She promised as she got out of the taxi. "She'll pay."

.

"Go home, Jude." Aaron said gently, as he watched her put her head in her hands for another long moment.

"What?" She jumped, having forgotten he was there. "No, no. I'm fine."

"You're knackered. You can finish the song on Monday. Just come in early or stay late or something."

"You can go home if you'd like, but I said I was going to work until six."

"For the sake of the song, don't." She looked offended, and he pointed to her computer screen. "I'm no producer, but I think you just deleted the vocals on half of the first verse."

"What?" Jude looked at pro tools on the screen, where, rather than fixing the volume, as she had intended, she had indeed erased a large selection of the vocal line. "Shit!" She quickly pressed undo, and the missing section reappeared. She played the verse again to make sure it was back.

"You're too distracted." Aaron said when she'd determined that the verse was okay. "Go home and get some sleep before you accidentally undo all the progress you've made on this song."

Jude sighed. "Yeah, okay, you're right. Thanks Aaron." She saved her progress to the hard drive and shut down the system while Aaron reset the board.

"Are you alright, sis?" he asked her as they walked out together.

"I'm okay."

"Are you sure?"

Jude felt tears fill her eyes again, but none of them spilled over. "It's just been a really really long day."

"Get some sleep." He kissed the top of her head. "You'll wake up in the morning and everything will be better. I'll see you on Monday."

"See you Monday." Jude left with the sinking feeling that everything was just going to get worse from here.

.

She got into her car, but didn't start it. Really, the only thing she wanted right then was sleep, but the last thing she wanted to do was go home alone again. And now that she'd messed up so badly with Alex...

Tears clouding her vision, she pulled out her phone and called Tommy. She'd made it all day without calling, and she let herself hope again that...

"You've reached Tom Quincy's voicemail. Leave a message." came Tommy's calm voice.

"Tommy." Jude whispered after the beep. "Please. I love you." She clutched the phone to her ear and just listened to the silence on the other end, imagining she could hear his breathing.

When he had first gone to New Brunswick, they had tried to skype, but his internet was so slow that he kept freezing. It finally became so frustrating that they gave up on video chat, and he would just call her after his mother was asleep.

She would ask him how his day was, and he would give typically monosyllabic and vague answers. She would ask him how he was, and he'd say he was tired. She would either back off and tell him about her day, about music, play him songs, or she'd pry until he snapped at her. But then she would apologize, and tell him she loved him, that she missed him, and his voice would soften and he'd say "I love you too, Jude. I'll be home before you know it, okay?"

Once they had run out of words, they would stay on the line, sometimes for hours, in a silence that was somehow intimate, despite the geographical distance between them.

She would fall asleep listening to the sound of his breath on the line and pretending she could feel him laying next to her.

"Your message has reached its limit" the recorded phone voice said after a few minutes, and Jude pressed end, putting the phone into her jacket pocket and leaning her exhausted head against the steering wheel, crying silently.

She sat like that for a long time before something in her forced her to remember the promise she'd made last night. She took a deep breath.

She would not victimize herself. She would try to find Tommy some way other than calling his cell phone, which he obviously wasn't planning to turn back on any time soon. She would apologize to Alex, she would find Tommy and make him come back... But first she would get some sleep.

She would face everything in the morning when she was better rested, and she would be okay.

Once her tears had dried, she fixed her makeup and drove home.

* * *

**A/N: **(Is there a chapter in this story where Jude doesn't cry?)

If you have thoughts to share, your review would be very much appreciated! Thank you very much for reading.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: **I have mixed feelings about the story in general, but this chapter was a lot of fun to write.

* * *

To Jude's chagrin, though not exactly her surprise, Alex was sitting in the lobby of her building when she got home. She groaned and tried to get to the elevator without him noticing her. No such luck.

He saw her and stood, following her to the lift. "Jude, wait. Let me explain."

"Alex, when I said later, I didn't mean tonight." She was too damn tired to deal with this right now.

"Please."

"Go _home_, Alexander. I'll talk to you when I've had more than an hour of sleep." She pressed the button to call the elevator.

"This will only take a minute. I just want to apologize."

Cullen, the evening security guard, who must have just come in for his shift, came up behind them and asked, "Ms. Harrison, would you like me to escort this gentleman out? As I understand, he made a bit of a scene earlier."

Jude looked at him with surprise. "He did?"

Cullen nodded. "According to the doorman, ma'am. Would you like me to escort him out?"

Alex gave her a pleading look, and she sighed. "No, thank you. It's alright. He's my guest." Cullen nodded again and stepped back. Jude got in the elevator, allowing Alex to follow her. "You made a scene?" She asked, pressing the button for her floor.

He looked embarrassed. "He did say a bit. I wouldn't call it a scene, really. I yelled at Fred because he wouldn't let me in."

"You yelled?"

"I raised my voice slightly. But I practically lived here for a year, and he acted like I was some random stalker off the street. I just wanted to talk to you."

Jude sighed. "Then talk."

"I'm not in love with you."

She looked skeptical. "You fought your way past my doorman and waited in my lobby for who knows how long to tell me that you _aren't_ in love with me?"

Alex winced. "Okay, that does look a bit odd, I'll admit." The elevator door opened and Jude stepped out. "I just wanted to apologize. I know kissing you was out of line, but I just want you to know that I felt nothing."

"Stop." She said as she reached her door, pulling out her key.

"Jude, please. I meant it when I said I was over you. My feelings for you are entirely platonic, I swear."

"No, Alex, they aren't. I'm sorry if I lead you on. That is all my fault. I never meant to hurt you." She opened the door and they both stepped inside. "But we can't keep doing this, or I'll just keep hurting you."

"You won't! I promise. That's what I'm trying to say! Jude, I felt nothing."

"I wish I could believe that." She sighed. "But I don't. I'm sorry, Alex. You have to go." She took off her jacket and laid it and her keys on a table, walking down the hallway away from him. To her frustration, he followed her.

"Let me prove it to you!"

She headed for her bedroom. "Go home Alex." She just wished none of this was happening. She just wanted to sleep.

"Jude, your friendship means so much to me. I realize that I crossed a line today, but it won't happen again, I... Wait, Kat? What're you–" He cut off abruptly with a muffled cry. There was a thump.

Jude stepped back into the hallway, turned to see what was going on, and froze. But it couldn't be. Not her. Not here.

"Scream and I slit his throat." Megan said calmly. She had Alexander knelt on the floor in front of her. One hand was covering his mouth, and the other held a knife to his throat.

"Megan?" Jude whispered. "B-but you're..."

"Locked up in the loony bin in Toronto?" She smiled. "Doctor Murray says I've made amazing progress."

"They let you out?" Jude asked in horror.

"I didn't plan for this. I didn't want to have to come here!" She snapped, and she must have pressed the blade more tightly into Alex's throat, because he let out a muffled cry and squeezed his eyes shut in fear. Megan regained her composure. "I had moved on, Jude. But then you had to go and say those things."

"H-how did you get in here, Megan? How did you get into my home?"

"You still leave a key under the mat, even after what happened last time. You know, Jude, that's not very safe."

"How did you find me?" Jude whispered.

"I got creative. And I had a lot of help from your little toy here." She took her hand off Alex's mouth for a second.

"I didn't know who she was, Jude, I swear, she–" Megan covered his mouth again.

"He thought I was some girl called Kat." She explained. "Who is that, by the way, Jude? Another girl you cut loose when she didn't worship you? Did she not kiss up enough? Do all of your friends need to be in love with you? That's why you're dragging around poor Alex here, isn't it? You just love the lovesick puppy dogs."

"What do you want?"

"Anyway, I followed him here, and he conveniently distracted the doorman." Alex made noises of protest through her hand, and she pressed the knife a little closer to shut him up. "Of course he didn't know that's what he was doing. He just couldn't wait for an opportunity to kiss your ass some more. It's pathetic."

"What do you want, Megan?" Jude asked again, her voice shaking. "Do you want to write a song? We can write a song. My music room is right through that door. We can go in there and we can write a song. We can write a whole album together. Is that what you want?"

"We are so far past that, Jude." Megan spat. "You're going to pay for those hurtful things you said."

"Hurtful things? I never said..."

"You said I was some crazy fan!" Megan shrieked. "We were friends, Jude! Sure, sure, I may have crossed the line trying to protect you, I understand. If you want to call me crazy, you can do that. I would understand if you said you got held hostage in the basement by a crazy friend, or even a crazy former friend, an ex-friend, but I WAS MORE THAN A FAN TO YOU, JUDE HARRISON." She screamed, pointing at Jude with the knife. Alex took the opportunity to get free of her grip, shoving her against the wall, trying to take the knife. But her reflexes were quick, and Alex, kneeling, was at a disadvantage. In the time it took him to stand up, Megan had wrestled free of his grip and plunged the knife into his stomach.

"Alex!" Jude cried.

He made a sort of choked groaning sound and staggered back, clutching his abdomen, the blood already soaking through his shirt under his fingers. Megan actually looked sick. "I didn't want to hurt _you!" _She protested. "You weren't even supposed to be here!" She was staring at Alex as he sank down the wall to the floor, and Jude took advantage of this, lunging forward and grabbing the bloody knife from Megan's hand, but before Jude could stab her, Megan launched herself toward Jude and grabbed at her arm. Jude threw the knife far out of their reach just as Megan knocked her to the ground and pinned her there. Megan looked in the direction of the knife, then wrapped her fingers around Jude's throat. "You think I need a knife, Jude?" Alex cried her name weakly, and there was another noise in the background, too...

Jude scratched frantically at Megan's hands and face, feeling skin peeling off under her nails, trying desperately to reach her eyes as she saw stars and the world slowly started to go dark. She tried to pry the hands off her throat, and almost succeeded, but Megan slammed Jude's head hard against the wall, and it stunned her for a small fraction of a second, long enough for Megan to get her grip back and continue crushing her windpipe. She felt her strength slowly slipping away, her vision turning into a dark tunnel.

And suddenly there was a sickening thud, and Megan's hands were off her throat. Jude coughed, desperately gasping for air. She felt hands moving her away form the wall, and heard a voice crying her name. As oxygen returned to her brain, her vision returned. Through the sparkling haze, she saw Tommy's panicked face above hers. He had hit Megan in the back of the head with a frying pan, of all things, and practically thrown her off of Jude.

"To–" she tried to choke out his name, but just dissolved into another fit of painful coughing. She tilted her head back slightly, opening her airway, and the air came a little easier. "Tommy."

"You're alright!"

"Alex." She coughed. "stabbed. You need to–" more coughing. "I'm fine. Go help him."

"You're sure?"

"Help Alex." She took a gulp of air. "Call an ambulance. Help him please."

"Okay, Jude, okay. Ambulance is on its way. You're alright." He pressed a frantic kiss to her forehead, then another, and another to her hand. Finally he stepped over her to go to Alexander, who was trying as best he could to keep pressure on the wound in his stomach.

"Jude" Alex whispered weakly. "She's okay?"

Tommy pressed his hands to the bleeding. "You think I'd be over here helping you if she wasn't?" He joked feebly. "Jude is fine."

"and that... that bitch... Megan"

Tommy choked out a laugh. "That bitch isn't waking up any time soon."

"Jude is okay." He murmured, his eyes closing.

"She's fine, man. And you're going to be fine too, okay? Just stay with me, alright? Jude, you too."

"I'm here." She choked out softly as she slipped slowly into unconsciousness.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: **Here, my lovely readers, is the second to last chapter.

* * *

The next evening, Jude woke slowly from a deep sleep, deepened by a combination of complete exhaustion, a head wound, and morphine. The first thing she noticed as she came to was pain in her head and throat, and a sensation that she couldn't breathe as easily as normal. She had a small moment of panic, thinking she could still feel Megan's hands choking her. What she had meant to do was thrash around and cry out, but the painkiller and the sleep still had quite a hold on her, and all she managed was a whimper, and to put her hands up to her throat before enough of the fog cleared enough for her to see that she was safe and sound in a hospital bed, and that nothing was wrapped around her neck, though it did feel bruised and swollen.

She looked around until she saw Tommy sitting in a chair next to her, his head resting on the edge of the bed, sound asleep. She felt a sudden and unexpected rush of tenderness at how young he looked, asleep like that. "Tommy." She said softly, running her fingers gently through his hair. Her voice surprised her. It was a rough scratching, comparable only to the sound of the worst laryngitis she'd ever had.

Tommy made a small groaning sound and moved his head slightly, still mostly asleep, but then sat bolt upright so suddenly it startled her. "I'm awake!" He insisted, disoriented, to no one in particular, then said "Ow!" and put a hand on his back, which was obviously sore from sleeping hunched over. "Dammit!"

Jude laughed a strange, scratchy laugh and said hoarsely "I'm sure that was comfortable."

Tommy focused on her then. "Hey! You're awake!" He put a gentle hand on the side of her face, then withdrew it quickly, as if afraid she'd protest. "How do you feel?"

"My throat hurts." She rasped. "And my voice is... And Alex!" She was seized with sudden panic. "She stabbed him! Megan stabbed him! Oh, God, is he alright?" She struggled to sit up, but his gentle hand on her shoulder pushed her back onto the pillows.

"Shh, Jude, it's okay. Just relax. Alex is fine. They took him straight into surgery last night, and it went well. He's out now. He's in the ICU. That's all I know, but he's okay."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"And me? Am I okay? Is... Is the..."

"You're fine." he said quickly. "Let me get a doctor. They can explain it better than I can, anyway." He got up, and when he came back there was a slender Indian woman in a white coat with him.

"Miss Harrison," The doctor introduced herself as she walked in. "I'm Dr. Patel."

Jude tried to sit up, but Tommy gently pushed her back again, saying "Here." and pushing a button on the side of the bed that raised the head up so that Jude could sit and still lean back against the bed. She thanked him and shook the doctor's hand.

"How are you feeling?" the woman asked.

"Um... My head hurts. And my throat."

"Any problems with your vision? Blurred, double, dark spots?" She shined her little penlight in Jude's eyes, flicking it back and forth.

"It was burry and double for a little bit when I first woke up, but it's alright now."

"Any nausea?"

"A little. But it's not bad."

The doctor checked Jude's chart and said "Do you remember what happened last night?"

Jude nodded. She had to shut her eyes at the memories, which filled her with the same panic she'd had the night before. Tommy grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and she concentrated on the pressure of his fingers. "She was in my apartment when I got home. She threatened us with a knife. She stabbed Alex for trying to protect me. She tried to strangle me, and she hit my head against the wall. Tommy saved us." She opened her eyes. "But I don't really remember anything after that. An ambulance, maybe? I don't know. I'm sorry." Tommy squeezed her hand again and let go, sitting back in his chair.

"It's fine. That was very good. Mr. Quincy incapacitated your attacker, and you were brought here by ambulance, where we ran some tests, did some scans, and we admitted you."

"You were pretty out of it." Tommy said. "It's not surprising you don't remember, right?" He looked at the doctor.

She nodded. "Especially with head trauma, it's to be expected. The fact that you remember everything that you do is a very good sign."

"Am I alright?" Jude asked the doctor. "My voice..."

Dr. Patel nodded, and turned a page in the chart "You have a very impressive concussion, and your larynx is severely bruised. You're lucky, though. None of the laryngeal cartilage was broken or permanently damaged. We put you on a steroid to reduce some of the swelling so you can eat and breathe normally, and your singing voice should be back to normal within a month, possibly a little longer. You should consider yourself on vocal rest. No singing for a while, and you should try to minimize your talking, but you should make a full recovery. And the other good news is you weren't deprived of oxygen long enough to harm your brain, or the fetus's brain, and your concussion appears to be fairly mild, no signs of an inter-cranial bleed. We'll be getting another set of scans soon to confirm."

"The baby is okay?" Jude asked, surprising herself by feeling a stab of fear at the thought that something might have happened to it.

"The baby's fine." Tommy said.

"Well," the doctor corrected. "it's hard to tell at seven weeks. The first trimester can be a rocky time in any pregnancy, and the risk of miscarriage is always present, especially with any kind of trauma. But you're young and healthy, and from what we can see, everything is progressing as it should be."

Jude felt more relief than she would have expected at that news. "Thank God." She whispered, and Tommy looked at her, surprised.

"You're going to be fine, Miss Harrison. Do you have any questions for me at the moment?"

Jude shook her head, but then said "The woman who attacked me. What happened to her?"

"Yes, of course. She was admitted to a different hospital, I believe. She's being treated for her head trauma, and that's all I know."

"I hit her pretty good." Tommy said. "She was _out_."

"You're going to need to give a statement to the police, and your friend will too. I believe Mr. Quincy already has."

"When do I have to give my statement?" Jude asked.

"We were told to call them as soon as you were awake and stable enough to answer their questions."

Jude looked frantically at Tommy. "Right now?"

Dr. Patel hesitated, then said "I have to see a few more patients before I call."

"Thank you" Jude sighed gratefully.

"Anything else?"

Jude shook her head.

"Alright then. I expect the police will be here in... let's say an hour or so, and either I or one of my colleagues will come around to check on you again after that, get those scans, and we'll see then about when we can get you home, alright?"

She nodded. "Thank you, doctor."

"Of course. The most important thing is that you rest."

"Gotcha."

The doctor left, and Jude and Tommy were alone again. One of the perks of being rich and famous, Jude supposed, was a hospital room to yourself. Tommy was just sitting quietly in the chair beside her bed, staring at her with an expression she couldn't quite read. He looked a little sad, definitely, and guilty. Fear, confusion...

His head was spinning, trying to figure out how angry she was, if she hated him, and trying to comprehend the relief on her face when the doctor had said everything with the baby was progressing as it was supposed to.

"We really need to talk, don't we." Jude said in her strange, raspy voice.

He laughed quietly. "You're not supposed to talk. Vocal rest, remember?"

"You talk then." She said, looking up at him with those big blue eyes, looking so hurt that the guilt flooded him stronger than ever. He just looked down with a sigh. "You know," she said "even if you didn't want to talk to me, you could have texted. It is the 21st century. Or at least turn on your damn phone. Do you know how many messages I left you?"

"I thought you wouldn't want to hear from me, and I knew I would have been tempted to call if I had it with me, so..." Tommy winced. "I may have accidentally on purpose left my phone in Heathrow Airport."

"_The airport?"_ she asked incredulously. "Tommy, where did you go?"

He sighed. "Home."

"Home?"

"New Brunswick. And Toronto."

"Why?"

"To visit my mom's grave, and then to talk to Mrs. M. I also stopped by and talked to Kwest."

"Did you find what you were looking for?" She asked, sarcastically.

"I... Definitely did a lot of thinking." He made a noise that was half-laugh, half-sigh, and focused intently on the blanket while he talked. "You know, I... I buried my mother, but I guess I never buried... what she did to me. You know, when I was a kid. I think I'm still... afraid sometimes that it isn't really over. It's like I'm afraid she's still got ahold of me. And when I got angry and I hurt you–"

"You barely hurt me." Jude insisted, her heart breaking at the pain in his expression. He was being so raw, so honest– when had he ever had the courage to admit out loud that he was scared?– and she felt the sudden urge to protect him from tearing himself apart, as she knew he was so prone to doing. "I don't even care. It barely bruised."

"Please don't try to justify it, Jude." He winced. "I lost my temper, and I crossed a line I swore I'd never cross. If I'm leaving any bruises at all, I've gone too far. Maybe it wasn't bad, but it could have been, and there's no excuse for that."

"Tommy, it's okay. I–"

"Shh, Jude. It's alright. I lost control, and I crossed a line, and as soon as I did, it was like... there was this voice in my head telling me that I was exactly like her, and I wasn't fit to be a father, that I didn't deserve to have you, and I just... I couldn't handle it, and I bolted. I got on a plane and flew all night and I just... ran. I shouldn't have, but I did."

"You are a good person." She said firmly. "You are not her, and you never will be."

He smiled a little. "You're really bad at this not talking thing."

"Tommy..."

"It's alright. I promise. Just let me talk, okay?" He said. Jude reached over and grabbed his hand, looking pointedly at him. She thought for a second that he was going to pull away, but then he looked up at her and lifted her hand, pressing her fingers briefly to his lips. He held her thin, calloused hand in both of his and continued. "I know you only met her once, but what you have to know about Caroline McAlley is that she can talk sense into literally anybody. Before I met her, all I did was fight. I guess everything with my mom made me think... well, I just thought that the only thing I had to offer was violence. But Mrs. McAlley taught me music, and more than that, she made me realize that I was _good for something_. I don't know where I'd be without her, but I know for goddamn sure I'd still think that the only thing about me that's worth anything is my fists."

This was so much more than he'd ever shared with her all at once, and it made Jude want to cry. She just wanted to take away the pain in Tommy's expression, wanted be able to go back in time and tell a 12-year-old Tom DuTois that he was worthy and talented and perfect no matter what his pathetic drunk of a mother said, but she couldn't, so she just squeezed Tommy's hand and tried to convey how she felt by whispering his name.

There wasn't anything he could say to her that could have articulated how he felt at that moment, the emotion so sudden and strong it made him feel like he'd been punched in the stomach, so he just squeezed her hand back. He cleared his throat of the lump that had formed in it, and continued, focusing his eyes on their clasped hands. "So, um... I went to see Mrs. M, and I told her everything, and she said 'I saw a lot of boys go through that place, and plenty of them came back again and again. But when I watched you play your first chords on the piano, I said to myself, this boy is something special.'" Tommy cleared his throat again, swallowing hard. "She said that when I played, I stopped being the kid on a path to life in and out of jail, and what showed was a boy with a way out. And she said that my problem is that I think of that violent kid as my true self, like every day I'm living a lie to cover it up until I snap and it comes out and I hurt someone that I care about." His voice cracked, his eyes flickering up to her face and away, and he cleared his throat again. "But what it really is, is that the violence, that anger, is like tarnish c-covering up who I am, and I just need to remember to wipe it off." He laughed, looking embarrassed. "It's a cheesy metaphor."

"No, it's perfect." Jude said. He looked up at her, surprised. "Tommy, you're always talking about the 'real you' like it's this awful person from your past that's going to creep up and take you over. But that's what I've been trying to say all these years. You are such a good person. Stop running away from who you think you are, and just be the Tommy that I love. Just remember that _that's_ who you are, not this thing you're afraid you're going to turn into at any moment."

Tommy nodded. "I'm going to try. I promise you that I will never ever hurt you like that again, but I can't promise I won't mess up and disappoint you. I know I'm really..." he sighed. "I'm messed up. And if you don't want to have a baby with me right now, I understand that. Hell, if you want to break up, I understand that too." He tried to smile at her, but his forehead was creased with worry.

"Oh, please. No way." Jude rolled her eyes. "We have fought for this for way too long for me to let you go that easy. You're stuck with me, Quincy."

Relief washed through him as he said "There's nowhere else I'd rather be, girl."

"But if you _ever_ do anything like this again..." She said quietly.

"Then I _really _don't deserve you." He finished. "Never again." He bent down to kiss her.

"Wait, there's more." she said, and he stopped. "When I thought I'd lose this baby, I just... I don't know. I was... really scared, and I've been thinking. I think..." She took a deep breath and took the plunge, saying "I think we should do this."

Tommy was frozen for a second, tensed. "You're sure?" He asked, cautiously. "Your career, your age, everything you said before, and with me being... not so perfect. And you've been through a lot. The timing is so off, and I get that. I'm okay with it if you don't want to do this right now."

"When has our timing ever not been off?" She joked. "I want to do this, Tommy."

"You're... you're completely sure you want to have this baby?"

"Positive."

A grin spread across his face. "You and me?"

"Yes."

"We're actually having a baby?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "We're having a kid. Our child. You and me."

She laughed too. "Yes! Now come here." She reached up and pulled his face down to hers, and he kissed her softly.

"When I showed up at Kwest's place, he yelled at me." Tommy said suddenly.

Jude let out a surprised laugh. "What?"

"He said 'Dammit, Quincy. That girl is the best thing that has ever happened to you. Get your ass on a plane right now.'"

Jude smiled "Smart guy."

Tommy smiled too. "I know. Thank God I was smart enough to listen to him."

* * *

**A/N: **I have a deep and abiding love for writing long conversations between characters (there's another one in the next chapter oops), but I'm never entirely certain that's what's enjoyable to read. I did enjoy writing it though (I stayed up until 4 AM one night and wrote this whole chapter) and with fan fiction, I suppose that's what counts.

Your thoughts are appreciated ever so. *overly showy bowing*


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: **Here we are, the final chapter.

* * *

The fog of opiate-induced sleep was lifting off of Alexander slowly, and he became aware that someone was sitting by his bedside holding his hand. He assumed it was one of his sisters, probably Anna, but when he was finally able to turn his head and open his eyes, he saw that he was wrong. "Jude?" He asked groggily.

She had been sitting with her eyes closed, her head resting in her other hand, but she looked up and said "Oh! You're awake! Hey!" She let go of his hand quickly.

"Your voice." He said, confused.

"Yeah, I know. It's better than it was yesterday, but not by much." she sighed, putting a hand up to her neck.

Her throat was ringed with purple-red bruises. He thought he could pick out the shape of fingers. "She did that?" He asked, horrified.

Jude nodded. "She didn't break any cartilage, thank God, but it's pretty swollen."

"Are you going to be able to sing?"

"Not for a while. In about a month, maybe a little more."

"But eventually?"

"The doc said I should make a full recovery. I'm lucky. No permanent damage, to my throat or to my brain or anything. Just some pretty severe bruising and a concussion. I'm being discharged like, right now."

"Good." He looked relieved. "And the... the baby?"

Jude nodded. "It's hard to tell this early, but they said everything looked fine."

"And you're keeping it? You and him together?"

"Yes." She said, not knowing what else to say.

"Is there a remote for the bed?" He asked after an awkward moment of silence.

"Um... Yes. Right here." She handed him the remote and he moved so that he was in a sitting position, the bed supporting his back.

"This isn't the same room I was in when I first woke up. This isn't the ICU?" He said.

Jude shook her head. "They moved you a few hours ago. You don't remember?"

"Oh." He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I do. Vaguely. I've been in and out. How long has it been?"

"Today is Sunday, so... almost two days since... everything. It's actually pretty fast. Alanna told me they said the knife didn't do too much damage to any major organs, so the surgery to repair the damage was fairly straightforward. You lost a lot of blood, and you'll have to stay in hospital for a few more days so they can monitor you, just with all the sutures and the everything, but you're doing really well."

Alex nodded. "They told me."

"Oh. And you talked to the police?"

He nodded. "This morning. I was basically half asleep, but they took my statement." he yawned. "Where is everyone? I mean, everyone... else. My family."

"Right, of course. They finally got hold of your parents. They're flying back. They'll be here tomorrow morning. Emily visited both of us yesterday, and she'll be back tomorrow too. Anna had to pick Becca up from day care, Ashleigh hadn't slept since you were admitted, and about an hour ago Derek finally convinced her to let him take her home. Alanna's getting something to eat. She's the one who let me in here. That was only about ten minutes ago. She's not going to be happy when she finds out you woke up for me and not her."

"It would be Ally who let you in. She's always been a pushover." He rolled his eyes, but smiled to let her know he was kidding.

"Yeah, well, she yelled at me pretty good before she did."

"She did?"

Jude nodded. "I deserved it."

"Yeah you did." He smiled again, but he wasn't really kidding this time, and the smile never reached his eyes, dropping quickly.

"I'm really sorry, Alex. About everything."

"I was always going to get hurt, wasn't I? This is my fault. I should have known."

"You couldn't have known who she was. Megan tricked you. She's psychotic. It wasn't your fault."

He gave her a look. "You know that's not what I mean."

"Right." She bit her lip and looked down at her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have... I- I didn't mean to lead you on... I'm really sorry."

Alex was silent for a moment. "What if he hadn't come back?" he asked softly, frowning.

"He did." She said firmly, looking back at him.

"I know that. But what if he hadn't?"

"If he hadn't, we'd be dead."

"I know." He sighed. "And I'm grateful for that, obviously. But that's not what I meant. If there was no one trying to kill you, and if he hadn't come back, what would you have done?"

"I..." She sighed. "I don't know. But that didn't happen. That wouldn't ever happen. He will always come back."

"Okay, but just imagine this. Weeks go by. Months. You're still pregnant, and I know you wouldn't have gotten an abortion, if the baby was all you had left of him. What do you do?"

"I don't know."

"I would have helped you raise the baby. As a friend, or, you know, whatever. I wouldn't have pushed anymore, not after what happened before, but I'd always be there." He sighed. "Eventually you realize he's not coming back. Not soon, anyway. What about then?"

"But he _did_ come back!"

He acted as if she hadn't spoken. "Alright then, I'll tell you what would happen. If you thought he wasn't coming back, you'd eventually realize I'm the next best thing."

"We are not going to–" She insisted, frustrated.

"I know we aren't!" He snapped, cutting her off. "Suspend disbelief for a second, Jude. This is a hypothetical situation."

"Why does it matter? He came back!"

He ignored her again. "We'd eventually get married, raise the kid together, maybe have one or two of our own. From here, I figure there are two possibilities. Option one, he doesn't come back. Maybe he's just disappeared, maybe he gets hit by a bus..."

"Alexander!" She protested hoarsely.

He rolled his eyes. "Calm down. It doesn't matter what happened to him, but he didn't come back, I married the love of my life, and we live happily ever after."

"Look, Alex, I'm really, really sorry, but you and I are not–"

"_Happily ever after,_" he said, cutting her off. "except that I would always _always_ know, deep down, that you were still pining for him. I'd always know that you were settling for me because you lost the one you'd really have chosen." She was silent, looking hurt and guilty.

He continued, calmly. "Option two. We're married, or at least together, it's been years, and he comes back. You're furious at first, obviously. You'd refuse to see him, say what he did was unforgivable." He rolled his eyes. "Oh, but he'd apologize." His voice was hard, sarcastic. "He'd explain. He'd say he was afraid, and he was stupid, and he knows he'll never be able to make it up to you, and doesn't expect you to forgive him, but if he could just see his kid. Just one time, and then he'll leave you alone if that's what you want. He just wants to meet his daughter, son, whatever. He'd give you those puppy dog eyes and probably write you sad songs, and you'd give in eventually."

Jude felt sick. Her heart was pounding painfully in her throat, and her chest ached. She could picture it all too clearly. "Alex." She whispered, a plea for him to stop.

He didn't. "And then it would be 'it's his kid too. He deserves to meet his own child. It's not a big deal, babe. I promise. You worry too much.'" His imitation of her was spot-on. Sweetly pleading, slightly manipulative, gently teasing at the end. She felt tears pricking her eyes, and forced them back. "And then one time would turn into every weekend, because 'he's really, really sorry, Alex, and he's so good with the kid, you should see him.' And eventually you'd be finding excuses to spend time with him without the kid around. Maybe you'd find a way to make him your co-producer." He said the last bit mockingly.

She flinched and whispered. "Alex, don't do this."

"And one night you'd be together and he'd apologise again, talk about how he screwed up the most important thing in his life, how he misses you, how he still loves you even after everything. Maybe you and I have been fighting a lot, maybe you're both a little drunk, and he's so handsome and mysterious and sad, unlike me, because I'm so safe and boring, and so you slip up, and you kiss, maybe more. You feel guilty for it, you know it's wrong, oh but it _feels so right_." He spat the last words, the venom in his voice increasing.

"Stop!" She pleaded, louder this time, not just because the words were hurting her, but out of sudden concern for him. "Seriously, Alex. You're not supposed to get so worked up, you're going to hurt yourself."

He just talked over her, faster and angrier. "So you keep sneaking around behind my back, careful not to call me by the wrong name this time." He laughed once, a terrible sound, hard and angry, and it looked like the action must have hurt the wound, because he winced and put his hand to his stomach. Jude begged him again to stop, but he continued anyway. "Maybe eventually you'd have the decency to leave me, but more likely, I come home from work early one day, to surprise you, and I'm the one who gets the surprise, because there you are" His face was contorted in pain now, hand pressed to his abdomen, panting. "In my house. Probably in my bed."

"Alexander!" She cried hoarsely. "Alex, you're hurting yourself! Stop it! You're going to rip a stitch or something!"

He groaned "Ow. Goddammit!"

"I told you!" She said. Then, softer, "Don't make it worse." She stroked his hair softly. "Please. She really hurt you."

"Yeah, well," He said, his breathing shallow and pained. "At least Megan had the decency to use a knife."

She jerked her hand back, as if the comment had burned her. Her mouth opened and closed a few times as Alex reached for the button that sent morphine into his bloodstream, pushing it once, twice. After a few moments he laid back into the pillow, his face relaxing. "What do you want me to do?" She asked, quietly, looking hurt.

He looked at her, the anger gone, replaced with tired sadness. "I want you to stop loving him."

"You know I can't do that."

He nodded. "I know."

"This isn't how this was supposed to go. I handled everything really badly"

He sighed. "I know."

"Do you know that I'm really, really sorry? That I never meant for you to get hurt?"

He nodded. "I think... At first I thought I was over you. I wanted to be over you. But I wasn't. I shouldn't have tried to get you back. It was childish, and I'm sorry."

"Will you ever be able to forgive me?"

"I think I already have." He said sadly. "That's the problem."

She sighed, understanding. "So I should leave you alone."

He held her gaze for a moment, then said. "I think that would be best."

She wanted to say something more, some final apology that would make it all okay, mean that he could still be her friend, but she couldn't find the words. "Right." She sighed. "Bye then, Alex."

He smiled a little, sadly. "Goodbye, Jude. I'm glad you're okay."

As Jude stood up and turned to walk out of the room, she saw him reach for the morphine pump again. She walked out of the room with her head down, but as she stepped through the doorway, someone in the hall called "You!" angrily, and she looked up, startled.

It was Maren, Jude saw. Her dark hair was cut short, and she was very tan compared to the last time they'd met, but her short stature and purple-framed glasses were familiar. Maren was walking quickly towards her, looking livid. "You!" She repeated in a hiss as she reached Jude. "How dare you?!" She was flushed under the tan, her large, blue-grey eyes narrowed.

Despite the fact that Maren was a few inches shorter than Jude, she managed to be very intimidating, and Jude took a reflexive step backward. "Maren–"

"How can you show your face here after what you did?! He gives you everything, and not only do you cheat on him, break his heart, but _then _you can't leave well enough alone, and now _this!_ You could have gotten him killed, and you _still _can't let him be?! I can't believe you! You... You..." She was angry to the point of being completely flustered, searching for the right word. This was a very different woman from the sweet, funny girl Jude had met six months prior. "harlot!" Maren finally spat.

Jude was frozen, not knowing what to do. "I didn't- I- I don't-" she stammered

"Harlot? Really Maren?" Alex's groggy laughter came from inside the hospital room. "What is this, the Seventeenth century?"

"Lexi!" Maren exclaimed, surprised, anger disappearing. She seemed to forget Jude, rushing into the room, to Alex's side. "You're awake! You're alright!" She said something that was too quiet for Jude to hear, and Alex nodded and laughed again, saying something in response, and then, to Jude and Alex's surprise, Maren kissed him. She pulled away quickly, embarrassed, but Alex pulled her back. Jude felt a profound sense that she was suddenly intruding on their private moment, not to mention that she feared Maren would turn around and start yelling at her again, so she turned and walked back down the hall, leaving Alex's room behind her for good.

Tommy was waiting for her in a couch in the patient's lounge at the end of the hall, playing a game on his phone. He looked up when she approached and slipped the phone into his pocket. "Hey. How is he?"

She sat down next to him and said dejectedly. "He's alright, I guess."

"Who was the woman that stormed down the hall towards you? Short, brown hair... It sounded like she shouted something?"

"Yeah... That was Maren. She's Alex's best friend since forever, and his ex-girlfriend from high school. She yelled at me. For obvious reasons, I guess. She called me a harlot."

"Harlot?" Tommy laughed. "Who says harlot?"

"Apparently she was _that_ mad that I got Alex hurt."

"Jude..." Tommy said, cautiously, "I didn't ask you this before because I didn't want to upset you, but... Why was he in our apartment in the first place?"

Jude's shoulders slumped. She put her head in her hands and said "I really messed up, Tommy."

Tommy's heart sank, and he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before saying "I guess I deserve that one. I should have expected, when I disappeared and didn't call..."

Jude looked up, surprised. "What?"

"Did you sleep with him?"

"What?!" She cried incredulously. "No! No way! Nothing like that! How could you think I'd– I would never... You were gone for two days, Tommy! Not two years!"

"Oh!" He exclaimed, relieved. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry. I just thought... When you said..."

"_No!_" She said adamantly. "Nothing like that, _never_ anything like that, Tommy, God! I just..." She sighed. "He showed up, at the studio, the day after you left, and I was crying, and he... he asked me what was wrong and then he... made me dinner." She sighed. "I should have known better than to believe him, but he said he was over it and I just... I wanted to believe him, because I miss having him as a friend, and he made me feel better, and I just... needed to believe that we could be friends."

"Girl, he's been in love with you for two years." Tommy said gently, rubbing her back. "You were engaged. Trust me, you're not that easy to get over."

"_I know._" She said miserably. "I just really wanted to believe him, so I let him cook me dinner, and we had lunch together the next day... I swear, I never did anything that would've been any more than a friend, but he... he tried recreate our first date, with the restaurant and the river and then he... kissed me." She admitted. "I slapped him." She added quickly, hearing Tommy's sharp intake of breath. "And I stormed off. But he came to apologize, and he came up to the apartment, and she was there, and he... he..." She started to cry. "Tommy, I broke his heart, and then broke it again, and then I _got him stabbed_. He could have died! He could've... could've... And it's all my fault!"

"Jude, Jude, shhh. It's alright." He put an arm around her shoulder, hugging her to him and kissing the top of her head.

"It's all my fault!" She repeated.

"_No._ It's Megan's fault he got stabbed, completely and totally that psycho's fault. Not yours. And as for the other stuff, it's my fault for leaving, and it's his fault for lying and saying he was okay."

"But I should have known. I shouldn't have cried into his shoulder, I shouldn't have believed him, especially after I saw how hard he was trying, and I should have–"

"I didn't say it wasn't a little bit your fault. You shouldn't have believed him, but he's the one who said it, and he's the one who tried to kiss you, and he's the one that came to apologize, and I'm the one who made you feel like you needed him in the first place, and it was _her_ that stabbed him. That was not your fault. There is no way you could have known."

"He- he said 'at least Megan had the decency to use a knife.'" She sniffled.

Tommy winced. "_That_ you did not deserve."

"I did, though. Tommy, I hurt him so much, and now he's never going to forgive me."

"Oh, he's young, Jude. If you leave him alone, he'll get over it. As a rule, young love is painful, but short-lived."

"But I was _too_ young." She insisted. "And I never got over you."

"We're the exception." Tommy smiled "Since when has this" He gestured between them "ever followed the rules?"

Jude laughed, sniffling and wiping the tears from her cheeks. "Never."

"Just watch, though." He said. "In two years, or three years, or ten years, he'll be married, and you'll run into each other again, and he'll be able to laugh about all of this. Okay?"

She nodded. "Okay."

He kissed her softly, then rested his forehead against hers and said "Can we go home now?"

"I would really, really like that."

* * *

**A/N: **Oh là là, mes chers. C'est fini.

I wrote an epilogue (it was actually like 4 chapters long and really boring) but I'm not posting it because I don't want to close down the possibility of writing another sequel (also because it was like 4 chapters long and really boring) and the epilogue I have would pretty much do that.

That said, I haven't started another sequel, nor do I have plans for one at the moment. I might write one in the future, because I really do like the character dynamic I have with this version of Tommy and Jude, and I also really like characters like Alex and Maren and Emily. At the same time, I've been writing in this universe (that is, this version of after the end of Instant Star) for about five years, and I kind of want to do something different. I have ideas in my head, but I'm not always quite sure how to implement them. It'll be a while before I post another chaptered story, if I ever do, but I'm sure I'll keep writing IS stories for a long time, whether long or short.

Thank you ever so much for your readership and your kind and thoughtful comments. If you ever want to talk to me for any reason, feel free to message me here, or even on my Tumblr (my URL is asortlight. The link is on my profile.) if you have a Tumblr. I'd love to hear from you. :)

Thanks again,

Kari


	13. Extras

Hey guys! Just wanted to let you know that I decided to post some of the extras that I've accumulated over the last few years that never made it in to Happy Birthday and Lost and Found.

I've posted the first one, which is an Alex/Maren thing that takes place between the two stories, and there are more to come.

I've called it Happy Birthday Extras, and there's more detail in that first chapter about what types of extras I'll be posting.

Just thought I'd let you know :)


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